Bright Sun, Dark Shadows: Tullio Crali’s Futurist Vision

The Forces of the Bend

‘Every generation must build its own city.’
Antonio Sant’ Elia, Architect

I recently visited an exhibition of the work of Futurist painter Tullio Crali (The Estorick Collection, London - now closed, but you can still buy the excellent catalogue).

Futurism was a movement founded by the writer FT Marinetti. It began with his 1909 publication of a Manifesto in which he argued that Italy’s great artistic heritage was holding it back; that all its museums and libraries should be destroyed; and it should embrace a more vibrant, modern, innovative culture - one that articulated the dynamism of the city and the speed of the machine age.

‘There can be no modern painting without the starting point of an absolutely modern sensation.’

Born in 1910, Crali grew up in Croatia and north-east Italy. From an early age he loved to draw, and he was inspired when at 15 he came across an article about Futurism in his local paper. He began experimenting with Futurist techniques and themes, employing sharp angles, confident curves and bright colours to convey the vigour of the modern world; cubism and abstraction to express its vital energy.
Crali painted skyscrapers ascending magisterially into the clouds; sailors busying themselves beneath the bridge of a high-tech battleship; cranes and dredgers creating their own bustling rhythms; a bold red racing car taking a corner at full tilt.

Broken Engine

The Futurists were particularly fascinated by aviation and they dedicated a new genre of art to it: ‘aeropainting.’ Flight was for them a supreme achievement of the industrial age. It represented speed and technology, progress and liberation. It intensified the gaze, created fresh perspectives on the familiar, and offered breathtaking new vistas.

‘The sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.’
FT Marinetti, ‘Manifesto of Futurism’

Crali was himself caught up in this enthusiasm when in 1928 he flew in an aeroplane for the first time.

‘Everything was wondrous, and when I found myself back on the ground I felt as if I had been robbed.'

Crali created many images that captured the elation of his experience in the air. Flying above the metropolis, floating above the clouds. The elegant curves of the propeller. The thundering roar of the engines. The bracing view from the cockpit as a pilot nose-dives into the city.

Nose Dive on the City

‘He who has to be a creator also has to destroy.’
Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’

Crali’s work was thrilling, forceful, energetic and optimistic. But there was a shadow looming over the Futurist movement. From the very beginning their passion came wrapped in a nationalist flag, and they believed that wholesale destruction was necessary to make room for worthwhile creation. Increasingly through the ‘30s their work addressed military themes, and the movement became closely aligned with Mussolini’s Fascist regime.

Crali was something of an exception. Though he created some official war art, he often clashed with the occupying Nazi authorities who considered him a subversive. 

Nonetheless Futurism ran out of road with Marinetti’s death in 1944 and the end of World War II. Crali, now sceptical about political dogma and disillusioned with the evolving Italian art scene, for a while took to painting mournful still lifes.

'My art changes form, but not substance. A lack of faith in mankind leads me to turn my attention to nature.’

Yet Crali remained a solitary enthusiast for Futurist ideals. And whilst over the coming years he found new forms of artistic expression, he kept returning to pictures of open skies, aerobatic display teams and supersonic flight. He always had his head in the clouds.

Crali died in 2000 in Milan, aged 90.

The Futurist story resonates today. On the one hand, there is something thrilling about their enthusiastic embrace of the modern world. Today, when the possibilities of technology seem boundless, we should retain something of the Futurists’ zeal, their optimism and their evangelism for change.

On the other hand, we need to be cautious. We may hear troubling echoes of Futurism’s transgressions in Silicon Valley’s obsession with creative destruction; with its corporate philosophy of ‘move fast and break things;’ with its clear eyed confidence in its own self worth and manifest destiny. 

A bright sun casts dark shadows. 


'My poor heart just flew away,
When it realized one day
The dreams that we planned
Would only end in shadowland.’

k.d. lang, ‘Shadowland'

No. 275

‘Town Bloody Hall’: Let’s Have an Argument

Norman Mailer and Germaine Greer: Photograph courtesy Pennebaker Hegedus Films

‘The topic for discussion this evening is a dialogue on women’s liberation.’

I recently watched ‘Town Bloody Hall’, a documentary film of a 1971 panel debate between four feminist intellectuals: Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston and Diana Trilling. The event is chaired by the writer Norman Mailer. 

‘Norman, I will define accuracy for myself. I don’t need you.’

It’s an unruly, combative affair. The speakers are articulate, funny, thoughtful and committed. And Mailer is not a neutral chairman. He is opinionated and outspoken, and likes to hog the microphone. Emotions run high. Audience members cheer and applaud, heckle and harangue, shout and storm out. Film-maker DA Pennebaker necessarily pursues a loose ‘run-and-gun’ style, and editor Chris Hegedus lets the material flow naturally, without commentary or explanation. It all makes for compelling viewing.

‘Just so I can defend myself against hecklers in the Town bloody Hall.’

Earlier in 1971 Harper’s Bazaar published Mailer’s essay ‘The Prisoner of Sex,’ a polemic aimed at the women’s movement. In introducing the event, Mailer anticipates that we’ll be in for both cerebral discourse and passionate protest.

‘Two enormous intellectual currents that have been going on in New York for many years are finally reaching their flood waters. One of them is that peculiar spirit of revolution which enquires further and further and further into the nature of men, women and society; and the other is of course that blessed spirit of nihilism which will rip everything apart, including free speech and assembly. I suspect we will have elements of both before the night is out.’

Mailer invites each of the panellists to speak for 10 minutes. 

First up is Jacqueline Ceballos, the President of the New York chapter of the National Organisation for Women. She argues that women are ‘underpaid and overworked with no chance of advancement anywhere.’ Her organisation helps women fight discriminatory work practices and campaigns for paid housework.

‘As far as the image of women is concerned we’re attacking the advertising industry. You know that the woman as portrayed on television, all over in the media, is a stupid senile creature. She gets an orgasm when gets a shiny floor.’

Next is Australian writer and academic Germaine Greer. Her theme is the patriarchal nature of the art establishment through history.

‘For me the significance of this moment is that I’m having to confront one of the most powerful figures in my imagination, the being I think most privileged in male elitist society, namely the masculine artist, the pinnacle of the masculine elite… I am caught in a basic conflict between inculcated cultural values and my own deep conception of an injustice.’

Greer cuts a striking figure in long black dress, fox fur and weighty Venus-symbol necklace. Her argument is lucid and articulate.

‘We broke our hearts trying to keep our aprons clean.’

Jill Johnston

Now columnist Jill Johnston takes the podium. Long-haired, laughing and clad in patched denim, she removes her shades and delivers a radical free-flowing poem that is both funny and challenging.

‘All women are lesbians except those who don’t know it, naturally.’

‘This is the body that Jill built.’

‘We should invite one of them to dinner.’
‘One of what, dear?’

Some way into her poem, Johnston is joined on-stage by her girlfriend and another woman. They embrace and roll about on the floor together. Now losing control, an irate Mailer complains that Johnston has exceeded her time-limit.

‘C’mon, either play with the team or pick up your marbles and get lost… C’mon Jill, be a lady.’

Johnston and her friends exit stage left, not to be seen again.

Mailer is an irascible figure throughout. He insists on referring to all the panellists as ‘ladies.’ He frowns and fidgets, sulks and swears. He revels in his muscular masculinity and enjoys picking fights.

‘We’ll take a vote, but I’m going to do the counting.’

‘You’re asking for a dialogue. Here it is. This is my half of the dialogue. You can counter.’

‘As usual you don’t understand what I’m talking about.’

‘You are all singularly without wit.’

Finally the literary critic Diana Trilling takes the stand. She argues for diversity of thought and action.

‘I can’t let all women be spokesmen for me. Because I’m not for their programmes necessarily. I have a great deal of loyalty to my sex and I’ve had it for a very long time. But that doesn’t mean I can be indiscriminate about the positions that I subscribe to just because they’re put forward by other women. That would seem to me to be an abdication of intelligence.’

Trilling provokes Greer by criticising her quotation of Sigmund Freud. Greer will have none of it. 

‘One of the characteristics of oppressed people is that they always fight among themselves.’

Greer revels in the sparring. She sighs, scowls, laughs and looks at the ceiling. She is a magnetic presence.

‘Town Bloody Hall’ is a time capsule. It captures a particularly vibrant period of feminism, when there were radically different perspectives on the movement and how it should proceed. It’s noticeable that wealth inequality and gay rights are dealt with at the margins. And racial discrimination doesn’t get a look in. 

The documentary stands as a testament to the power of spirited dialogue and vigorous discussion. This was a time when writers and public intellectuals were respected, when free speech and open debate were cherished. It’s bracing stuff: provocative, funny, confusing, inspiring, exasperating. And infinitely preferable to an era of cancelling and no-platforming.

The final questioner asks Greer to imagine the world for women after liberation. When she refuses to deal in hypotheticals, he persists:

‘I tried to make my question non-polemical.’
‘Balls you did.’
‘I really don’t know what women are asking for. Now suppose I wanted to give it to them.’
Greer leans into the microphone:
‘Listen. You may as well relax, because whatever it is they’re asking for, honey, it’s not for you!’

 (The American documentary filmmaker DA Pennebaker passed away last year, aged 94. His work included ‘Don’t Look Back’, ‘Monterey Pop’, ‘Primary’ and ‘Ziggy Stardust.’)

'Typical girls get upset too quickly.
Typical girls can't control themselves.
Typical girls are so confusing.
Typical girls - you can always tell.
Typical girls don't think too clearly.
Typical girls are unpredictable (predictable).
Who invented the typical girl?
Who's bringing out the new improved model?
And there's another marketing ploy.
Typical girl gets the typical boy.’

The Slits, ’Typical Girls’ (A Forster / P McLardy / T Pollitt / V Albertine)

No. 274

Nocturnal Animals: The Waking Dreams of Leon Spilliaert

Léon Spilliaert,Woman at the Shoreline, 1910

‘I am no good at interpreting other people’s dreams; I have too many of my own.’
Leon Spilliaert

I recently visited a fine exhibition of the art of Leon Spilliaert (The Royal Academy, London - now closed but you can still go on a virtual tour).

Spilliaert was born in 1881 in Ostend on the Belgian coast. He grew up above the family perfume shop, a sickly, reclusive child obsessed with drawing. At 18 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bruges, but, after just a few months, ill health forced him to abandon his studies. He worked as an illustrator for a Brussels publisher and spent some time in Paris. However, he soon returned to Ostend where he felt more at home.

‘My head seems to be sort of filled with mists.’

Spilliaert was frustrated by his lack of recognition. He suffered chronic stomach ache and insomnia. He endeavoured to cope by taking long twilit walks through the empty streets of Ostend. He wandered down gloomy Hofstraat, past the Royal Galleries, to the wide-beached seafront. He watched the fog rolling in over the deserted promenade; the clouds looming over lonely beach huts.

'The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!'
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 'Crime and Punishment’

Léon Spilliaert, Hofstraat, Ostend, 1908

In infinite shades of grey, with just the occasional dash of colour, Spilliaert created images of the solitary signal pole at the end of the pier, the desolate breakwater looking out onto the North Sea. In Indian ink, watercolour, pastel and charcoal, he painted the lighthouse in a storm; the Royal Palace Hotel haunting the far-off skyline. He depicted slender trees reaching for the nightsky, moonlight falling on the mountaintop, the cemetery at dusk. 

'The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'
John Milton, ‘Paradise Lost’

There’s a man hailing someone in the distance, a lady in a wide-brimmed hat with her back to us on the shoreline. There are young women paddling in the shallows; long robed women waiting - by the clock, by the window, on the jetty. A girl, caught in a gust of wind, holds on for dear life.

Spilliaert paints his bedroom - empty and unadorned. In his glass-roofed studio, amongst the pot plants, he studies his blue sketchbook; scrutinizes his drawing board. He examines himself in the mirror: smartly attired, but with dishevelled hair standing upright in an alarming quiff. There are dark rings around his eyes. 

'Night is the other half of life, and the better half.’
Goethe

Léon Spilliaert, Self-portrait, 3 November, 1908.

Spilliaert was an artist of unease and melancholy, of solitude and silence. He recognised that the night is a time for reflection - when, liberated from the urgent bustle of the day, a settled peace descends, and the world looks and feels different; when profound truths reveal themselves. At night we stand on the threshold between rationality and fantasy, between dreams and reality. It is a time for invention and resolution.

'I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmed sight
What may not bless my waking eyes.'
Anne Brontë, ‘Night’

We should all respect and value ‘the wee small hours of the morning.’  We should treasure their creative potential. At night the mind is free to explore untravelled paths, to make uncommon connections. We can come to terms with the problems that we can’t quite solve in the light.

'Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.'
Samuel Johnson

I confess I have for the most part been early to bed and a sound sleeper. I have been robustly conformist. Nonetheless, I have always kept a pen and paper by my bed, so that I can record the random thoughts and recollections that sometimes interrupt my slumber. In the morning I have discovered both lateral insights and meaningless drivel. 

The difficulty is telling one from the other.

'Sunday is gloomy.
My hours are slumberless.
Dearest the shadows
I live with are numberless.'

The Associates, ‘Gloomy Sunday’ (Rezső Seress)

No. 273

‘The Whole Place Ruinated’: Samuel Beckett and The Wisdom of the Ancients

‘The wisdom of the ancients that’s the trouble they don’t give a rap or snap for it any more, and the world going to rack and ruin, wouldn’t it be better now to go back to the old maxims and not be gallivanting off killing one another in China over the moon.’
Cream, ‘The Old Tune’ (Samuel Beckett)

I recently saw a fine production of Samuel Beckett’s short 1960 play ‘The Old Tune.’ (The Jermyn Street Theatre, London)

Gorman, an organ grinder, is struggling to get a melody from his dilapidated instrument. He encounters Cream, an old friend he has not seen in years.

‘All this speed… has the whole place ruinated, no living with it any more, the whole place ruinated, even the weather.’

They sit on a park bench together and chat about the good times of yore, the fates of various acquaintances, sweethearts and family members. They endeavour to smoke a cigarette. They complain about the younger generation and the traffic, about modern machinery and manners.

‘Ah the young nowadays Mr Cream very wrapped up they are the young nowadays, no thought for the old.’

‘They’d tear you to flitters with their flaming machines.’

As is the way with the elderly, Gorman and Cream are comfortable talking about death. It is a constant companion, a familiar friend.

‘Seventy-three, seventy-three, soon due for the knock.’

‘And Rosie Plumpton bonny Rosie staring up at the lid these thirty years.’

Their animated reflections seem lucid, but between them they cannot agree on any of the details of past events. Their memories are fading, and like the antiquated barrel organ, they struggle to conjure up the old tune.

‘The Old Tune’ is a gentle, poignant play, rich in elegant language and wry observation. And it has a warm human relationship at its centre.

It’s easy to be dismissive of old people. All that rose tinted nostalgia, free association and discontinuity. The story juke box and the family Rolodex. The trivial details about journeys and parking, ailments and treatments. The distrust of youth and technology. The points of view that have fixed and hardened with time. The ardour for refuse collection.

‘You had to work for your living in those days, it wasn’t at six you knocked off, nor at seven neither, eight it was, eight o’clock, yes by God.'

But, of course, if you can see past the sentiment and wistful reminiscence; past the ritual and conservatism; past the confusion of cracked recollection – the elderly still have a good deal to offer. They have precious experience, shrewd insight and hard earned wisdom. They have seen the world and lived a life.

Cream is keen to establish that humankind should seek progress, but not in every direction. He’s particularly sceptical about distant wars, atomic bombs and moon landings.

‘My dear Gorman the moon is the moon and cheese is cheese what do they take us for, didn’t it always exist the moon wasn’t it always there as large as life and what did it ever mean only fantasy and delusion Gorman, fantasy and delusion.’

Why, Cream asks, are we investing so heavily in things that really don’t matter at all? 

‘Rheumatism they never found the remedy for it yet, atom rockets is all they care about.’

I found that these sentiments still resonate today. Progress and innovation, science and technology need direction and focus. They should be pointed at the greatest human needs and the truest human benefits. Let’s not burn precious time, expertise and money on ‘fantasy and delusion.’ Some journeys may not be worth taking. 

‘Ah there I’m with you progress is scientific and the moon, the moon, that’s the way it is.’

At length the two chaps begin their farewells. But they don’t actually get up to go.

‘You know what it is Mr Cream, that’d be the way to pop off chatting away like this on a sunny morning.’


'But now the days are short.
I'm in the autumn of the year.
And now I think of my life as vintage wine,
From fine old kegs,
From the brim to the dregs.
And it poured sweet and clear.
It was a very good year.’
Frank Sinatra, ‘It Was a Very Good Year’ (E Drake)

 No. 272

The Riches of Embarrassment: The Awkward First Outing of My NHS Spectacles

Zhang Xiaogang’s My Mother, 2012. © Zhang Xiaogang / Courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo by: Wang Xiang.

'The secret of the creative life is to feel at ease with your own embarrassment.’ 
Paul Schrader, Screenwriter and Film Director

I was allocated a desk towards the back of class. I sat behind Marco, who had charm and menace in equal measure, and had recently attacked my new geometry set with a G-clamp. Our inventive Maths Teacher had taken to communicating technical terms through pictographs. An empty birdcage, for example, suggested a polygon. 

Squinting at the cryptic chalk marks on the distant blackboard, I decided now was the time.

I reached into my blazer pocket and pulled out my first pair of glasses - robust black, plastic-rimmed NHS spectacles that had recently been fitted by Uncle George the optician. 

I gently settled them in place. A little uncomfortable perhaps, but at once the blackboard squiggles became magically clear. Excellent, I thought to myself. And surely no one will notice this modest adjustment to my appearance.

Unfortunately Marco, ever alert to distractions, turned in his desk and set about mocking my new geeky look.

I blushed. 

With an excited scowl Marco licked his index finger and held it towards me, hissing, as if the heat of my embarrassment was causing it to steam. Soon the whole class had joined in - scoffing, scorning, taunting, teasing - hissing with hilarity. 

I wanted the earth to swallow me up.

I could feel a hot sweat creeping across my whole body. My temperature went through the roof. And all of a sudden the lenses on my new glasses steamed up – like window panes on a cold winter’s day. I couldn’t see a thing.

Please, God, make it stop.

At length my classmates exhausted their mirth and the Maths Teacher restored order. Of course, I got over it. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. 

And the class sat in wait for the next scapegoat...

On reflection my whole childhood was characterised by a good deal of discomfort and embarrassment.

I was awkward in my home-knit sweater, in the black shiny shoes that Mrs Crossley gave me. I was awkward carrying my kit to school in a Sainsbury bag, in my slight lisp when I said the letter R. Awkward in my duffle coat when everyone else was wearing parkas, in my crew cut when everyone else had a shaggy mane. Awkward in my FA Cup ears.

Perhaps this is the lot of all children: to be shy and embarrassed, clumsy and graceless, bashful and blundering; to obsess about any absurdly insignificant differences that might set them apart; to pine for normality; to long to belong. 

And of course a predisposition to embarrassment endures beyond childhood. 

I arrived at College wearing white socks with Romford cut-downs and the sleeves of my tartan shirt torn off in the style of Big Country. At my first formal luncheon I put a spoon of salt in my coffee. In a conversation with Mikey G, who had scant knowledge of soul music, I confused the Four Tops with the Temptations - and he never let me forget it. At a literary dinner party I cited John Osborne’s famous play ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger.’ In the preliminary exchanges before a meeting I found myself kissing a male colleague.

I once mistook my most senior Client for a taxi driver and asked him to take me to the airport.

‘No, Jim, it’s Barry.’

I could go on…

Embarrassment is a curious thing. According to the American author Toni Bernhard, it is ‘an emotional response to an innocent mistake.’ It’s prompted by taking a step below the line of one’s own standards, or across the line of social conventions. 

'The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate.’
Douglas Engelbart, Engineer and Inventor

Of course, an innocent mistake may make us feel uncomfortable and may indeed create an enduring impression. But it shouldn’t lead to guilt or shame. It’s really not that important. Some people claim, with age and wisdom, to have overcome embarrassment. I’m not sure that’s the right attitude. 

Embarrassment is the lens through which we get to appreciate our own unrealistic expectations of ourselves. It is the prism through which we see the irrational assumptions of others. Embarrassment makes us conscious of conventions and codes, and aware of our own unique differences. It makes us more alert, more observant. It prevents us from taking ourselves too seriously. 

Surely embarrassment should be cherished as an essentially human quality. It is the gateway to insight and humour. It is the creative’s friend.

The American theatre and opera director Anne Bogart made the following observation:

'Every creative act involves a leap into the void. The leap has to occur at the right moment and yet the time for the leap is never prescribed. In the midst of a leap, there are no guarantees. To leap can often cause acute embarrassment. Embarrassment is a partner in the creative act—a key collaborator.'

A couple of years after my glasses made their inauspicious debut, Elvis Costello arrived triumphant on the British music scene. Suddenly and incredibly NHS spectacles were hip. I realised, with hindsight, that I ought not to have been embarrassed at all. In fact I had been ahead of my time.

'Received a letter just the other day,
Don't seem they wanna know you no more,
They've laid it down, given you their score,
Within the first two lines it bluntly read.

You're not to come and see us no more,
Keep away from our door,
Don't come 'round here no more.
What on earth did you do that for?

No commitment, you're an embarrassment,
Yes, an embarrassment, a living endorsement.’

Madness ‘Embarrassment’ (Thompson, Barson)

No. 271

Dora Maar: A Subversive Life

Dora Maar Untitled (Hand-Shell) 1934 © Estate of Dora Maar / DACS 2019

'All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.’
Andre Breton, Surrealist Writer

I recently attended a fine exhibition of the art of Dora Maar (Tate Modern, London until 15 March).

Henriette Theodora Markovitch was born in 1907 and raised in Argentina and France. Her French mother owned a fashion boutique and her Croatian father was an architect. She studied art in Paris and gradually developed an enthusiasm for photography. In 1931, with director and set designer Pierre Kefer, she opened her first studio. And she changed her name to Dora Maar. 

Initially many of Maar’s assignments were in fashion and advertising. Between the wars there was a burgeoning interest in women’s style, health, and fitness. As consumption grew, so did the appetite for bold, arresting images. This was a time when advertising walked hand-in-hand with contemporary art. 

Maar was naturally inventive and had an eye for the unusual and uncanny. A woman washes her hair and the lather takes on an alien quality. A lady removes her smiling face as if it were a mask. A model’s head is replaced by a sequinned star. 

Cecil Beaton Dora Maar behind one of her works, in her studio at 6 rue de Savoie, Paris 1944 Musée Picasso (Paris, France) © The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive at Sotheby’s

In one striking image Marr hand-painted elaborate tattoos onto an elegantly attired woman. For an anti-aging cream she superimposed a spider’s web over a model’s face. She had a talent for subversion.

‘Nothing is as strange as reality itself.’
Brassai, Photographer

Maar was active in left-wing politics at the time and developed an interest in street photography. Recording the poverty on the edges of Paris, travelling to Catalonia and London, she sought out the strange sights that surround us in everyday life. A wicker kangaroo wearing boxing gloves stands watching the traffic. A legless mannequin looks out from a first floor window. A suited man disappears beneath the pavement. 

'The unconscious must reign through the intellect.’
Eileen Agar, Surrealist Painter and Photographer

Maar established close relationships with the Surrealist movement that was then based in Paris and she became one of the few photographers to be included in their classic exhibitions of the 1930s. The Surrealists celebrated the power of the unconscious mind. They were fascinated by the revolutionary force of dreams, and believed that the associations we bring to everyday objects reveal our unconscious desires.

Dora Maar, The years lie in wait for you (around 1935). The William Talbott Hillman Collection © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019

Photography had hitherto mostly been a medium of fact and rationality. But in Maar’s hands it was a vehicle for subjectivity and fantasy. Through extreme close-ups and bold crops she challenged the viewer to look afresh. Through unexpected contexts and dramatic angles she made cryptic images that questioned logic and common sense. Through carefully constructed photomontage she created bizarre and exotic new worlds.

A two-headed calf sits atop a classical fountain. A hand emerges from a conch shell on a beach. Eyes float across a gloomy sky. A child bends backwards on an inverted stone vault. And a baby armadillo regards us with sinister detachment. 

Maar teaches us to challenge rationality and convention at every turn; to construct and deconstruct; to subvert people’s expectations - of ourselves and the world around us. If we want to catch the eye, to arrest attention, to provoke thought, we need to see the strange in the everyday. We need to stop making sense.

Dora Maar, Man Looking Inside a Sidewalk

From the late 1930s Maar pursued painting as an artistic outlet. She created cubist portraits, sombre still-lives and melancholy landscapes. And then in her seventies she returned to photography, her first love, making a series of photograms – camera-less images produced by placing objects on photo-sensitive paper. With these moody abstractions, sometimes scratched and over-painted, she was asking questions to the last. 

Maar died in Paris in 1997, aged 89.

In support of International Women’s Day (8 March), this piece was written without any reference to Dora Maar’s famous partner.

'Isn't it strange?
Isn't it strange?
I am still me.
You are still you.
In the same place.
Isn't it strange?
How people can change
From strangers to friends,
Friends into lovers,
And strangers again.’

Celeste, ‘Strange’ (C Waite / J Hartman / S Wrabel)

No. 270

Picasso Drinking Gasoline: In Praise of Restless Souls and Inventive Minds

'Study for the Horse Head (I)', a sketch for ‘Guernica’ (1937)

'I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.'
Pablo Picasso

Picasso sits before his easel in a pair of shorts and no shirt. He is 75. He has been set the challenge of creating an image in 5 minutes with a new felt-tip pen. He sketches with speed and confidence - long fluid lines, bold squiggles, dabs of colour. He stares intently at his canvas. A bunch of flowers becomes a tubby fish, which turns into a jaunty cockerel, and finally a red-eyed faun.

‘I could go on all night if you want.’

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s fascinating 1956 film ‘Le mystère Picasso’ seeks to shed light on Picasso’s creative process. The artist paints on transparent blank newsprint so that the crew can film on the other side. He takes us on a dazzling, restless, inspiring journey.

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.’

The documentary features in the fine ‘Picasso and Paper’ exhibition, currently running at the Royal Academy, London (until 13 April).

Pablo Picasso, Women at Their Toilette, Paris, winter 1937–38
Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean

‘By chance I managed to get hold of a stock of splendid Japanese paper. It cost me an arm and a leg! But without it I’d never have done those drawings. The paper seduced me.’

For Picasso paper was a vehicle for expression that was always close at hand. It was a tool for preparatory studies. It was a fertile medium in its own right. He created on writing paper, wrapping paper, wallpaper and newspaper. He sketched on notebooks and napkins, magazines and menus, packaging and postcards. He drew in pencil, oil, ink, crayon and charcoal. He folded and glued, cut and pasted, painted and printed.

'I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.’

The exhibition presents a torrent of ideas, thoughts and feelings, a gushing stream of consciousness. It takes us from two charming silhouettes of a dog and a dove, cut from paper when Picasso was nine years old; through his Blue and Rose Periods; through Cubism, Surrealism and Neoclassicism; all the way to a skull-like self-portrait, in black and white crayon, that he made at the age of 91. 

Dog, Málaga, c. 1890 Cut-out paper
© Museu Picasso, Barcelona. Photo, Gasull Fotografia © Succession Picasso/DACS 2020

'To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.’

On the way we see countless fauns, goats and doves; matadors and minotaurs; harlequins and horses; nudes and portraits; lovers, jesters, cavaliers and circus performers. Picasso burnt two eyes and a mouth into a paper napkin with a cigarette to make a head. He created a plaster cast of a crumpled sheet of paper. He drew a cheeky leg on a Vogue fashion spread.

'Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.’

Picasso clearly had a phenomenal work ethic. He just kept producing fresh, original ideas across all manner of media. He couldn’t help himself.

'Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.’

And he wasn’t afraid of the absurd, the ugly or the obscene. His work is unfiltered, unfettered, uncensored. Freud would have had a field day.

'The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' sense.’

When fellow artist Georges Braques first saw 'Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon' he observed:

'It made me feel as if someone was drinking gasoline and spitting fire.’

Picasso next to the cut and folded cardboard sculpture of a seated man for Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
© RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / image RMN-GP © Succession Picasso/DACS 2020

I left the exhibition in awe of Picasso’s extraordinary appetite for change, his craving to create. He seems to have had a relentless desire to express ideas, to articulate feelings, to explore, to pioneer. He was indeed drinking gasoline.

'If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!’

Picasso was, of course, a unique talent and a problematic personality. But he still suggests some simple lessons for people working in the creative professions.

We should cultivate a restless mind - diligent, dynamic, determined; alive to new possibilities and fresh perspectives. We should not seek to check, edit or censor ideas before we’ve given them room to breathe. We should avoid nostalgia; never rest on our laurels; never look back.

'Action is the foundational key to all success.'

Above all, we should reach for a pad. Scribble, sketch, jot and note. Carry a journal, make a list. Devise a scheme, form a theory, hatch a plan, draft an idea, plot an escape.

Go on. Make it up, write it down. Now.

'I do not seek. I find.’

At the end of the Clouzot film Picasso expresses dissatisfaction with one of his images. He sets about over-painting it. ‘But what about the audience?’ Clouzot asks.

‘I’ve never worried about the audience and I’m not about to start now.’

'O, the wayward wind is a restless wind,
Is a restless wind that yearns to wander.
And I was born the next of kin,
The next of kin to the wayward wind.’
Sam Cooke, ‘The Wayward Wind’ (S Lebowsky, H Newman)

No. 269

‘Ace in the Hole’: Beware the Seductive Allure of Cynicism in the Workplace

'Bad news sells best. Cause good news is no news.’
Chuck Tatum, ‘Ace in the Hole’

In Billy Wilder’s splendid 1951 movie ‘Ace in the Hole’Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a hard-bitten, unscrupulous journalist who has been fired from the big East Coast papers for lying, drinking and womanising. Arriving in a small New Mexico town, looking for a break to take him back to the big time, he takes a job at the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. 

'I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog.’

After an uneventful year at the paper, Tatum stumbles across an incident where a man has been trapped alive down an old Native American mine. He weaves a sensational story about an ancient curse, a hero in peril and a distressed wife waiting back at home. The piece makes the front page and precipitates a stream of onlookers and reporters to the site of the accident.

'This is the way it reads best, this is the way it's gonna be. In tomorrow's paper and the next day's. It's the way people like it. It's the way I'm gonna play it.' 

Tatum understands that human interest sells newspapers, and he’s happy to spice up the truth a little to enhance that human interest.

'Human interest. You pick up the paper, you read about 84 men or 284, or a million men, like in a Chinese famine. You read it, but it doesn't stay with you. One man's different. You want to know all about him. That's human interest.’

Next Tatum does a deal with the local sheriff to keep competitive press reporters away from the scene, promising that the celebrity he garners for the official overseeing the rescue will increase his chances of re-election. When the disgruntled wife of the trapped man threatens to leave, Tatum coaxes her to stay on and reap the commercial benefits of the sensation at her hitherto desolate trading store. 

'I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.’ 

Then the chief engineer reports that he can get the trapped man out in 12 hours by shoring-up the mine walls. This is too soon for Tatum. He persuades the contractor to drill from above, which will take a number of days. The more dramatic the project, the greater the engineer’s reputation, the more lucrative the jobs he’ll secure in the future.

'I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.’

For Tatum himself the incentive for spinning out the story is simple: more exclusives, more recognition, a bigger job, more money. Soon he’ll be back at the top where he belongs.

'Look, I've waited a long time for my turn at bat. Now that they've pitched me a fat one, I'm gonna smack it right out of the ballpark.’

Intense, vigorous and on a short fuse, growling and grinning, teasing and cajoling, Tatum orchestrates a full-scale media circus. Day-trippers arrive from the city. Cars and tour-buses queue to get in. A special train is laid on. A carnival sets up in the shadows of the mine. 

The disgruntled pressmen endeavour fruitlessly to get Tatum onside.

'We're all in the same boat.’
'I'm in the boat. You're in the water. Now let's see how you can swim.’

‘Ace in the Hole’ is a modern fable. It illustrates what happens when truth is pushed to one side, when compromises are made, when people are manipulated to pursue their own self-interest. It’s a story of when cynicism takes hold.

Of course cynicism can be seductive. Cynics are often charming and funny, crafty and canny. You’ll find them at every level of status and experience; in every company, community and country. They can bend the truth to make it more attractive. They can make straight dealing seem archaic and naïve. 

But cynicism is corrosive. With every corner cut and lily gilded, with every minor deception and petty deceit, with every scornful remark and sarcastic observation, there is an erosion of trust, a decay in confidence, an unpicking of the ties that bind people together. And, in time, sooner or later, things fall apart.

Of course, for all his charisma, intelligence and foresight, there’s one element of the whole media circus that Tatum can’t control: the health and durability of the hapless victim trapped for six days down a mine. And this is where his perfectly laid plans gradually come unstuck.

'When you have a big human interest story, you've got to give it a big human interest ending. When you get people steamed up like this, don't ever make suckers out of them. I don't want to hand them a dead man.'

In memory of Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) who passed away earlier this month.

'Well, if friends with their fancy persuasion
Don't admit that it's part of a scheme,
Then I can't help but have my suspicions
'Cause I ain't quite as dumb as I seem.
And you said you was never intending
To break up our scene in this way.
But there ain't any use in pretending
It could happen to us any day.
How long has this been going on?
How long has this been going on?’

Ace, ‘How Long?’ (P Carrack)

No. 268



The Clash Teach The Three Rs: ‘Rehearse, 'Rite and Record’

The Clash - Credit: Pennie Smith

'The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in.
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growin’ thin.
Engines stop running, but I have no fear,
'Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river.'
The Clash, ‘London Calling’

I recently visited a display at The Museum of London commemorating the 40th anniversary of The Clash’s third album, ‘London Calling’ (until 19 April 2020).

This 1979 release marked a critical moment in British popular music. It led a breakout from the narrow confines of punk and mapped new, more expansive creative territories. It was swaggering and confident, rebellious and romantic. Where previously The Clash had been the standard bearers for punk minimalism, ‘London Calling’ experimented with ska and reggae; with rockabilly and rock’n’roll; with piano, sax and brass. Where previously the band had been deeply sceptical about America’s cultural worth, they now embraced its status as the wellspring of rock’n’roll. 

'We wanted 'London Calling' to reclaim the raw, natural culture. We looked back to earlier rock music with great pleasure, but many of the issues people were facing were new and frightening. Our message was more urgent — that things were going to pieces.’
Joe Strummer

True to The Clash’s own roots, ‘London Calling’ considered contemporary themes: police oppression, racism and unemployment; lost idealism, consumer ennui and nuclear fallout. (It was written in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident.) But it also looked further afield, reflecting on the Spanish Civil War, Montgomery Clift and the enduring appeal of a brand new Cadillac. It was a thrillingly eclectic cocktail of top tunes and radical ideas.

'I'm all lost in the supermarket.
I can no longer shop happily.
I came in here for that special offer,
A guaranteed personality.’
'Lost in the Supermarket' 

The Clash - Credit: Pennie Smith

The display at the Museum of London, along with the accompanying scrapbook, afford us the opportunity to consider the very particular circumstances that led to this vital, exhilarating album. 

Here are some of its lessons.

1. ‘If You’re in a Rut, You Gotta Get Out of It’

‘If you hold them to their past, you’re strapping on a straightjacket.’
Kris Needs, ZigZag Magazine

By the time The Clash came to planning their third album, they’d reached a fork in the road. The Sex Pistols had split up and Sid Vicious was dead. The punk genre they had collectively pioneered, for all its blistering brilliance, was running on empty. It had become all three chord Spartanism, snarling nihilism, safety pins, spitting and mohicans.

As a journalist observed at the time:

‘The first album detailed their concerns (repression, class war, boredom, etc.) while the second showed up the dilemmas of their position rather than actually going some way to resolving them.’

The Clash recognised that they had to evolve and move on.

2. Build a Tight Team

The band had recently parted company with their manager Bernie Rhodes and found themselves without a studio. They relocated to Vanilla Studios in Pimlico and set about rehearsing. In contrast to previous albums, they kept these sessions private.

‘We felt quite alone in some ways. We found the place in Pimlico and became even tighter, to the point where you didn’t need to talk when you were playing because there was a natural communication there.’
Paul Simonon

The main songwriters, Mick Jones and Joe Strummer, had not penned a new song in over a year. And so the group began the process by performing covers from a broad variety of genres.

3. Establish a Routine

 ‘There was a real intensity of effort and our recreation was playing 5-a-side football as a way of starting our rehearsal days. We’d play until we dropped and then we’d start playing music. It was a good limbering up exercise.’
Joe Strummer

The band developed a disciplined daily routine: a midday game of football in the playground opposite the studio, egg and chips in the nearby café, followed by extensive rehearsals. As ever, habit is the creative’s friend.

'I just think we really found ourselves at that time and it was a lot to do with the football.’
Mick Jones

4. Do Things in the Right Order

Once they had built confidence and coherence through rehearsing cover versions, the band took to writing new songs, and then rehearsing these. They then transferred to Wessex Studios in Highbury to begin recording. They referred to their disciplined regime as the Three Rs: ‘Rehearse, ‘Rite and Record.’

This may seem an obvious point. So often in any creative endeavour we charge ahead and try to do everything at once. The Clash demonstrated that it’s critical to give each developmental phase time and space, and to approach them in the right sequence.

‘That’s probably why it’s our best, because it was written, rehearsed and then recorded, rather than just going into the studio and see what turned up.’
Topper Headon

5. Add a Dose of Adrenaline

The Clash had appointed veteran producer Guy Stevens to oversee the album. Stevens was a fast-working maverick who had recorded with Mott the Hoople back in the day. He created a sense of urgency in the studio by smashing chairs, whirling ladders and shouting in the musicians’ faces.

He also liked to play a recording of the 1979 FA Cup Final - when Arsenal beat Manchester United 3-2 - at full volume over the studio speakers, while holding a scarf bearing the words 'There's only one Liam Brady'.

6.  When You’ve Found a Groove, Stay in It

One of the remarkable things about ‘London Calling’ at the time was that it was a 19-track double album. This seemed at odds with the punk movement for whom such things had the whiff of prog rock excess and self-indulgence. In order to address possible accusations of commercial exploitation, The Clash insisted that ‘London Calling’ be sold as a two-for-one offer.

The truth was that the band had hit such a rich vein of form that they had too much material for a single album. The final song, 'Train in Vain,' arrived so late that it was originally excluded from the back cover's track listing. 

The lesson is: when you’ve found a groove, stay in it.

‘London Calling’ was released on 14 December 1979. Pennie Smith’s iconic cover photo featured Paul Simonon smashing his bass on stage at New York’s Palladium theatre earlier that year. (She had originally been reluctant to use this image as it was out of focus.) Ray Lowry’s art direction echoed that of Elvis Presley’s first album.

From the moment we heard the first urgent chords of ‘London Calling’; from the moment we acquainted ourselves with the assertive strut of ‘Working for the Clampdown’; from the moment the bass on ‘The Guns of Brixton’ came rumbling in … we knew this was it, the real deal – it can’t fail.

'I know that my life make you nervous.
But I tell you I can't live in service.
Like the doctor who was born for a purpose.
Rudie can't fail,’
‘Rudie Can’t Fail’

Rudi Can’t Fail - Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, The Clash 1979

No. 267

‘An Intenser Expression’: David Bomberg on Building Life and Art Anew

David Bomberg 1890–1957 Vision of Ezekiel 1912

'We must build our new art life of today upon the ruins of the dead art life of yesterday.’
David Bomberg

I recently visited a small exhibition of the early work of British artist David Bomberg. (The National Gallery until 1 March.) 

Bomberg was born in Birmingham in 1890, the seventh of eleven children. His parents were Polish Jewish immigrants who subsequently settled in Whitechapel in London’s East End. He grew up in poverty, but single-mindedly pursued an artistic career. After a chance encounter at the V&A with the established painter John Singer Sargent, he gained a place at the Slade School. 

‘I hate the Fat Man of the Renaissance.’ 

Whereas the British art establishment of the day steadfastly resisted the innovations that were taking place on continental Europe, Bomberg was one of a number of young painters who were emboldened by the likes of Picasso and Matisse. He gradually developed a radical style that combined the abstraction of cubism with the dynamism of futurism.

When he was 22 Bomberg’s mother died of pneumonia. She was just 48. He channelled his grief into 'Vision of Ezekiel,' a work that considered the biblical story in which a prophet is taken to the Valley of Dried Bones and witnesses their resurrection.

'And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest.'
Ezekiel, Chapter 37

The geometric figures in ‘Vision of Ezekiel’ dance with pure joy, hug one another, and raise their hands ecstatically to the heavens. They are in awe at what has happened to them, animated with a renewed lust for life. It is a heartfelt work.

Detail from David Bomberg In the Hold, about 1913-14 © Tate

Bomberg’s paintings around this time responded to his family’s experiences and to the world around him. He was inspired by the muscular activity at the Judeans gymnasium where his brother trained as a boxer; by the dramas played out at Saint Katharine’s Wharf where ships brought in human cargoes of immigrants; by the raw physicality that he witnessed at Schevzik’s Vapour Baths in Brick Lane where locals went in search of ‘purification.’

Bomberg created sharp, angular abstractions, teeming with energy, vibrant with colour. There were jagged elbows, taught necks, arms aloft and legs akimbo. Stretching and straining, squatting and stooping. Wrestling, embracing, gripping and grasping. Holding on for dear life. His paintings had an urgency about them, an electric charge, a vital sense of struggle. 

Bomberg’s progressive thoughts and rebellious attitude got him expelled from the Slade. But he forged ahead, and within a year, in 1914, he was given a show at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea. In the catalogue he wrote:

'In some of the work… I completely abandon Naturalism and Tradition. I am searching for an Intenser expression. In other work… where I use Naturalistic Form, I have stripped it of all irrelevant matter.’

Perhaps there is a lesson for us all here. So often in work and life we compromise, concede and dilute. We waste time and energy. We allow ourselves to be caught up in the trivial and superficial, the bland and banal. 

If we truly want to ‘build our new life of today’ the answer may reside in ‘stripping away irrelevant matter’; in finding more concise, more concentrated articulation of our feelings; in seeking out heightened experiences. We need to find ‘an intenser expression.’

David Bomberg, The Mud Bath, 1914. © Tate

With the onset of the First World War Bomberg enlisted and served in the trenches on the Western Front. Like many of his comrades he turned to poetry as an outlet. Distraught at the death of his brother and many of his friends, in 1917 he shot himself in the foot. He was fortunate to escape a firing squad.

After the conflict Bomberg’s experiences prompted a change in artistic direction. He increasingly painted portraits and landscapes, embracing a more figurative style. The radicalism of cubism and the optimism of the machine age just didn’t feel relevant any more.

‘Hemmed in. The bolted ceiling of the night rests
on our heads, like vaulted roofs of iron huts the troops
use out in France, - unlit. Grope – stretch out your
hand and feel its corrugated sides, rusted,

Dimly seen, six wiring-stakes driven in the ground,
askew, some yards apart; - demons dragging, strangling -
wire. Earth and sky, each in each enfolded -
hypnotised; - sucked in the murky snare, stricken dumb.’

David Bomberg, ‘Winter Night’

No. 266