Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Breaking Down the Walls

‘Sophie Taeuber with her Dada head’, 1920, by Nicolai Aluf (Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin)

I recently attended a fine exhibition of the work of Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (Tate Modern, London until October 2021).

Taeuber-Arp applied her creativity across a range of media: from cushions, bags and necklaces; to stained glass, furniture, rugs and tapestries. She painted and danced; taught and edited; designed costumes, stage-sets and marionettes. She defied all categorisation, denied every traditional hierarchy. She broke down walls.

Sophie Taeuber was born in Davos in 1889. Her father, a pharmacist, died of tuberculosis when she was still a child. Having studied drawing in Switzerland, she moved to Germany to take classes in design, woodwork, weaving and beadwork. From the outset she was interested in developing a diverse set of skills.

‘For some weeks I’ve been really torn, as I still don’t know which kind of workshop I should join. I think textile design suits me, and it’s relatively easy to find something to do with it, too.’

At the outbreak of the First World War Taeuber returned to Zurich where she studied modern dance with the choreographer Rudolf von Laban, taught textile design at the School of Arts and Crafts, and embarked on a career in the applied arts.

Taeuber’s work was rooted in simple colour-block patterns that she created as watercolours, exploring the infinite possibilities of shape, shade and juxtaposition. Sometimes she introduced suggestions of figures that danced joyously off the page. She applied these designs to patterned purses, beaded necklaces and embroidered pillowcases; to fashion, furnishings and furniture.

‘I ended up doing a whole series of little watercolours, which I can easily rework for beaded bags, cushions, rugs and wall fabrics.’

Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Purse / Perlbeutel, 1917-1918. Silk, glass beads, knitted. Switzerland. Via Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

Many artists fled to neutral Switzerland to escape the War, and Taeuber became active in the Dada movement that flourished in Zurich as a result. This group of painters, poets and performers rejected the logic, reason, and conventions that had led to the conflict. Instead they embraced nonsense, irrationality and the absurd. 

Taeuber designed costumes, sets and puppets for Dada performances. She danced in avant-garde shows at the Cabaret Voltaire - in masks and under false names, so as not to upset her bosses at the School of Arts and Crafts. 

Taeuber particularly enjoyed collaborating with French artist Hans Arp and they became partners. After the War the couple travelled extensively and worked on architecture and interior design projects for cafes, hotels and private homes. They married in 1922, took on French citizenship and settled near Paris.

In the 1930s Taeuber-Arp joined various Paris-based artist groups, she founded a journal and continued to teach. In her work she persisted in exploring the relationship between line, form and colour, in pictures and wooden reliefs. Her geometric abstractions were cool, considered and playful. Bright hued curves, cones and contours skipped across the canvas. Sharp triangles, sinuous lines and jaunty circles jostled for attention.

Sophie Taeuber-Arp ‘Angela' (marionette for King Stag) 1918 Museun für Gestaltung, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Zurich. Decorative Arts Collection

In 1940, when German troops invaded Paris, Taeuber-Arp and her husband fled to southern France and in 1942 they returned to Zurich. 

And then one night in January 1943, Taeuber-Arp missed the last tram home and slept in a snow-covered summer-house. She was found the next day, dead from the carbon monoxide that had issued from a faulty stove. She was 53.

Despite her tragic end, Taeuber-Arp left an enduring impression of joyfulness and love of life. Her work was vibrant, colourful, inspiring. And in photos she always seemed to be smiling, laughing, exuberant. In a 1937 letter to her goddaughter she wrote:

'I think I have spoken enough to you about serious things; which is why I speak [now] of something to which I attribute great value, still too little appreciated — gaiety. It is gaiety, basically, that allows us to have no fear before the problems of life and to find a natural solution to them.’

Animated Circles 1934 by Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1934)

We could all learn a great deal from Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Within the creative industries you’ll still find segmented disciplines; hierarchical attitudes towards different platforms and between creativity and craft. Taeuber-Arp encourages us to work freely, without restraint, across categories; to break down those walls; to distill our delight with the world and share it.

'The intrinsic decorative urge should not be eradicated. It is one of humankind's deep-rooted, primordial urges. Primitive people decorated their implements and cult objects with a desire to beautify and enhance.’

'Breakin' down the walls of heartache, baby.
I'm a carpenter of love and affection.
Breaking down the walls of heartache, baby.
I got to tear down all the loneliness and tears
And build you up a house of love.’

The Bandwagon, 'Breakin' Down The Walls Of Heartache’ (D Randell / S Linzer)

No. 335

The Benign Bluff: ‘Make It Totally Vitriolic!’

Apollo 11 liftoff. Credit: NASA

'Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.'
Jack London

Chris was a charming and hugely talented editor who was a master at producing emotive films to support our presentations. I popped in to brief him on his next assignment. 

One of our Clients had commissioned us to supply a short edit that would feature at the climax of a forthcoming sales conference. It needed to be grandiose and magnificent - something that suggested achievement, progress, dynamism. It should perhaps include Apollo rockets blasting into the sky and joyous communal dancing; Rocky atop the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and that scene from Witness where they build a house together. 

Chris nodded.

‘And you say this is for a mid-market shoe brand?’ 

I chose to ignore the sarcasm and pressed on.

‘Oh, and the Client has requested that the piece be sound-tracked to Tina Turner ‘Simply the Best.’’

Chris winced. This was not going to be his most creative challenge. But after a pause for reflection, he gave a weary sigh.

‘It’s OK. I’ve got it. Lots of fireworks, ticker tape and uplifting moments that’ll have them punching the air in the conference hall. I’ll make it totally vitriolic.’

I hesitated for a moment. Chris had clearly got the brief. But what did he mean by totally vitriolic? 

I determined that it was best not to disrupt the positive momentum.

‘Great. Exactly. Make it totally vitriolic. Let’s crack on.’

Over the next week I occasionally popped by to see how Chris was getting on. All was going well. He’d integrated futuristic wizardry from The Matrix; dramatic leaps from Crouching Tiger; and he’d concluded the edit with Jack and Rose on the bow of the Titanic. Perfect. It was totally vitriolic.

'You're simply the best,
Better than all the rest.
Better than anyone,
Anyone I've ever met.’
Tina Turner, 'Simply the Best’ (H Knight / M Chapman)

Our shoe Client’s sales conference was a great success and Chris’ inspirational video added a triumphant closing note to proceedings. My benign bluff had served its purpose.

'It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.'
Mark Twain

I read recently in The Times (20 May, ‘Bluffing is a sign of being clever') about research into bluffing carried out at the University of Waterloo in Canada and published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.

‘People like stories. Even if you’re at the top of your field, being a pretty good bullshitter gives you just that little bit extra edge.'
Martin Turpin, PhD researcher, University of Waterloo

200 students were given a list of concepts and asked to define them even if they were not confident they knew their precise meaning. Six of the concepts were real, including ‘general relativity’ and ‘sexual selection theory’. Four, such as ‘neural acceptance’ and ‘subjunctive scaling’, were not genuine. Another group of students were then shown the answers and asked to judge how convincing they were. 

The research found that those who were best at bluffing also scored best in intelligence tests. And it concluded that bluffing should be rehabilitated as an art form: it is an evolved skill that helps people navigate social environments.

'People have this assumption around people who bullshit, that they are mostly people who are dull or talentless, and they use linguistic trickery to get an edge up where they don’t actually have any substance…[But] bullshitting is quite fundamentally human, and might actually demonstrate intelligence in a very human way...If you are good at bullshitting, then across the majority of human enterprise there will be room for somebody like you — someone who can tell a good story.’
Martin Turpin, PhD researcher, University of Waterloo

I would always urge people to tell the truth. It’s more important now than ever. But we should recognise that we’re in the business of persuasion; of advocacy and storytelling. And occasionally it is entirely appropriate to go with the flow; to pretend, affect and simulate; to bluff one’s way out of a tight spot.

'Since he was much weaker than his enemy, he could afford to display no weakness at all.'
Michael Dobbs

A month or so after the sales conference, I received a call from Chris.

‘You bastard.  I’ve been saying vitriolic left, right and centre. And someone’s just corrected me. That’s not what vitriolic means at all!’

'If you search for tenderness,
It isn't hard to find.
You can have the love you need to live.
But if you look for truthfulness,
You might just as well be blind.
It always seems to be so hard to give.
Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard
And mostly what I need from you.’
Billy Joel, ‘Honesty'

No. 334

‘I Am My Own Fantasy’: Marc Bolan and the Creative Ego

Roger Bamber/Shutterstock

'Well, you can bump and grind, it is good for your mind.
Well, you can twist and shout, let it all hang out.
But you won't fool the children of the revolution.
No, you won't fool the children of the revolution.’

‘Children of the Revolution’

I recently watched ‘Cosmic Dancer,’ a splendid BBC documentary about the musician Marc Bolan.

In his brief life Bolan brought colour, style and romance to drab early ‘70s Britain. He set the charts ablaze and hearts aflutter with his swaggering guitar pop. He inspired a generation of teenagers, challenged stereotypes of masculinity and invented Glam Rock.

‘I guess my name will live longer than any record. I am the ‘Cosmic Dancer’ who dances his way out of the womb… I am a lifestyle. I am my own fantasy.’

Bolan created his own world of gurus, warlocks and wizards; of gypsy dancers and ‘silver-studded sabre-tooth dreams.’ With a sway of his slim hips and a wave of his elegant hands, this latter day troubadour looked his audience straight in the eye and serenaded them. He was ‘your boy, your 20th century toy.’ He was ‘just a Jeepster for your love.’ And he ‘loved to boogie on a Saturday night.’

‘I’ve always known I was different right from the start, right from the moment I was born. When I was younger I certainly thought I was a superior sort of being. I was very much into my own little world in those days.’

Marc Bolan was born Mark Feld in Hackney, East London, in 1947. His father was a lorry driver and his mother worked on a fruit stall in Berwick Street Market. As a child he fell in love with Elvis Presley, Eddie Cochrane and Gene Vincent. But most of all he fell in love with himself - as he preened, pouted and posed in front of his bedroom mirror.

‘As a little kid I was always into music… I used to just look in the mirror and wiggle about. I was completely knocked out by my own image, by the idea of Mark Feld and what he would become.’

Aged 9 Bolan was given his first guitar and he formed a skiffle band at school. Later he embraced the dandy discipline of Mod and featured in a Don McCullin shoot about the youth movement for Town magazine.

Peter Sugar, Michael Simmonds and Mark Feld in Town magazine, September 1962.

‘For me clothes were wisdom and knowledge… In those days I created a world where I was king of my own neighbourhood. I was always a star, even if it was only a star of three streets in Hackney.’

Bolan briefly took up modelling. But then he read a book of Rimbaud’s poetry and ‘felt like my feet were on fire.’ He began writing his own verse.

‘I dreamed of voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of. I boasted of inventing with rhythms from within me a kind of poetry that all the senses would recognise, and I alone would be its translator.’

Soon Bolan was trying his hand as a musician, styling his early efforts on Bob Dylan.

‘I thought, if he can sing like that and play guitar that bad, I can do it.’

In 1965 this Bohemian minstrel signed to Decca Records and changed his name to Marc Bolan. Fame didn’t fall easily into his lap by any means. He made a modest impression with Mod band John's Children. And then, inspired by Ravi Shankar, he took to playing acoustic guitar while sitting cross-legged. The psychedelic folk rock duo that he formed on the back of this, Tyrannosaurus Rex, was critically acclaimed and enthusiastically promoted by DJ John Peel. But again it was only moderately successful in sales terms.

T. Rex: The Slider (1972)

‘I wish I could get away to another place where mountains rise unspoilt to the sky and you could ride horses as far as the eye could see.’

At length, thirsty for stardom, Bolan bought a Gibson Les Paul guitar, teamed up with producer Tony Visconti and recorded his first hit. Released in October 1970, ‘Ride a White Swan’ combined Bolan’s mystical lyrics with a brighter pop sound, a fresh, modern re-articulation of ‘50s rock’n’roll. 

'Wear a tall hat like a druid in the old days.
Wear a tall hat and a tatooed gown.
Ride a white swan like the people of the Beltane.
Wear your hair long, babe you can't go wrong.’ 

'Ride a White Swan’

Bolan expanded the group, shortened its name to T Rex and everything fell into place. The hits came in quick succession throughout 1971 and 1972. ‘Get It On’, ‘Hot Love’, ‘Jeepster’,’Telegram Sam’,’Metal Guru’,’Children of the Revolution’, ‘Solid Gold Easy Action.’ 

Bolan had created a production line of exuberant electric boogie, and T Rex became a huge pop sensation, mobbed by teenage girls wherever they went.

‘I like being loved. Isn’t it nice that someone can love you enough to put your picture on their bedroom wall? The frightening thing is the sheer strength of it all.’

Bolan was well aware that his popularity was as much based on his image as his music.

‘95% of my success is the way I look. Look and presence is what people pick up on. People are really works of art and if you have a nice face you may as well play about with it.’

Bolan’s long lustrous curls tumbled over his delicate shoulders. His purple open-neck shirt revealed a gold pendant on a hairless chest. He shimmied across the stage in flared trousers and stacked heels, scarves on his wrists and a sailor’s hat on his head. He wore leopard, tiger and zebra skin prints; sequins, silk and satin; feather boas, floral shirts and figure-hugging tank tops. He finished off his look with a little glitter on each cheek. 

'You're so sweet.
You're so fine.
I want you all and everything,
Just to be mine.
'Cos you're my baby.
'Cos you're my love.
Girl I'm just a Jeepster
For you love.’

‘Jeepster'

Of course pop stardom is fleeting. By late 1973 Bolan’s fickle young audience were turning their attention to other heart-throbs - to the Osmonds and David Cassidy.

‘I’ve never felt so insecure as I do about my music, because I’m so exposed. What I’m playing and singing is a projection of my real self.’

Though Bolan had a few more hits, the original T Rex line-up disintegrated and his marriage broke up. He turned to drink and drugs and put on weight. His career limped on with further albums and tours, and his own teatime TV show. But the glory days were over.

In September 1977, Bolan was being driven home through Barnes by his backing singer and partner Gloria Jones. The yellow Mini struck a fence post and then a tree. Bolan was killed instantly. It was two weeks before his 30th birthday. 

‘Personally the prospect of immortality does not excite me, but the prospect of being a materialistic idol for four years does.’

Bolan’s time at the top was brief and brilliant. He came to represent an age of innocence, an era of youthful optimism, a period when pop really mattered.

Some took Bolan less seriously because he courted teen magazines and photo shoots; because his looks were flamboyant and his lyrics were daft. But such criticism failed to understand the thrilling effervescence and precious transience of pop music. And Bolan left a legacy. In creating Glam Rock he cleared a path for Bowie, Roxy and Punk.

'It’s easy to underestimate him because he overestimated himself.'
Keith Altham, Publicist

Viewed from a distance, one can’t help being struck by Bolan’s extraordinary narcissism and arrogance. This was a man whose self-belief knew no bounds and who often spoke with a comic hauteur.

'If God were to appear in my room, obviously I would be in awe, but I don't think I would be humble. I might cry, but I think he would dig me like crazy.’

In my time I have known quite a few conceited creative people. I have become convinced that original thinkers need a certain amount of ego to sustain them; that you can’t break conventions without a little self-importance; that invention often comes with pretention. Of course nothing excuses rudeness or poor treatment of others. But there is a price to pay for difference. And it’s a price worth paying if there’s real talent to back it up.

‘I do lie a lot, you know. I feel my credibility as a poet allows me to make things up.’

A few years ago Brian was driving Gwyn and me to a meeting in West London. As we passed Barnes Common, Brian pointed out the spot where Bolan met his end. The car radio had been playing quietly in the background. Suddenly and magically ‘20th Century Boy’ started blaring from the speakers. Bolan had lost none of his dramatic flair. 

'My friends say it's fine, friends say it's good.
Everybody says, it's just like a rock 'n' roll should.
I move like a cat, charge like a ram.
Sting like a bee, babe, I wanna be your man.
Well, it's plain to see you were meant for me
I'm your boy, your 20th century toy.’

T Rex, ‘20th Century Boy’ (M Bolan)

No. 333

Charlotte Perriand: ‘The Art of Living’

Charlotte Perriand in her studio on place Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 1928. The hands holding a plate halolike behind her head are Le Corbusier’s. Photo: Archives Charlotte Perriand

'The extension of the art of dwelling is the art of living.’
Charlotte Perriand

I recently visited an excellent exhibition of the work of designer Charlotte Perriand (The Design Museum, London until 5 September).

Perriand applied modernist principles to furniture design. She didn’t decorate a room, she equipped it for living. Her furniture addressed fundamental human needs and desires. Her interiors embraced space, light and flexibility. And she recognised the huge importance of storage. Critically, with experience she evolved her approach: she learned from her travels; she synthesised traditional craftsmanship with industrial production. She responded to ‘transient times.’

'Dwellings should be designed not only to satisfy material specifications; they should also create conditions that foster harmonious balance and spiritual freedom in people’s lives.'

Here are some lessons derived from Perriand’s full and fascinating life.

1. Better Design Creates a Better Society

Born in Paris in 1903 to a tailor and a seamstress, Perriand studied furniture design at the École de L'Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs. Two years after graduating, she renovated her loft apartment, turning it into a compact modernist dream. Her Bar sous le Toit (‘Bar under the roof’) had a built-in cocktail-bar of aluminium and glass, with nickel-plated copper stools; a chrome-plated table with a fitted gramophone; a leather banquette.

In 1927 Perriand applied to work at the studio of modernist architect Le Corbusier. She was rudely rejected.

‘We don't embroider cushions here.’

A month later however, Le Corbusier saw a recreation of Perriand’s Bar sous le Toit at an exhibition, and promptly offered her a job in furniture design.

Bar sous le Toit (‘Bar under the roof’)

Working alongside Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, Perriand designed three chairs for three different tasks - all employing highly functional tubular steel: the Fauteuil au dos basculant, a light chair with canvas back and seat, ideal for conversation; the Fauteuil grand confort, an easy chair with square leather cushions, for relaxation; and the Chaise longue, a futurist machine for sleeping. They all became classics.

Perriand imagined that her tubular steel furniture could be mass-produced by Peugeot, the bike manufacturer. They didn’t quite share her vision.

'Our attempts at talks with the Peugeot bicycle company resulted in half an hour of total incomprehension.'

Perriand believed that better design helped create a better society. She worked with modern materials in bold colours; experimented with movable, foldable functionality; valued space, fresh air and light. 

‘Hygiene must be considered first: soap and water. 
Tidyness: standard cupboards with partitions for these.
Rest: resting machines for ease and pleasant repose.’
The Studio, 1929

There are a number of photographs of Perriand around this time. She sports a close-cropped bob, wears a dress with a bold print and a self-made necklace of industrial ball-bearings. She looks confident, playful, thoroughly contemporary.

2. ‘Adapt to Transient Times’

'Everything changes so quickly, and what is state-of-the-art one moment won’t be the next. Adaptation has to be ongoing – we have to know and accept this. These are transient times.'

In the 1930s Perriand was heavily involved with left-wing politics. To this end she designed a dwelling for low-income families for which each individual was allocated 14 square metres. And as the modernist machine aesthetic became increasingly associated with militarism - cold and inhumane - so she set aside expensive chrome. Instead she embraced natural forms and handcrafted techniques; affordable materials that could be mass produced and easily constructed. 

On weekend expeditions with friends to the Normandy beaches Perriand took inspiration from found objects. 

'We would fill our backpacks with treasures: pebbles, bits of shoes, lumps of wood riddled with holes, horsehair brushes—all smoothed and ennobled by the sea.’

Perriand on the chaise longue

3. ‘Choose Life’

At the exhibition you can see Perriand’s notebooks and plans. She began designing her chairs by reviewing current models and then she explored what was possible from first principles. Her sketched ideas were detailed, vibrant and thoughtful. When she worked on a building, she spent time visiting the site alone, absorbing its natural qualities. 

'In every important decision there is one option that represents life, and that is what you must choose...Life is something in motion.’

4. ‘Better to Spend a Day in the Sun than to Spend it Dusting our Useless Objects’

Le Corbusier had not given Perriand due credit for her designs and, after working with him for a decade, she ‘stepped out of his shadow.’

In 1940 she travelled to Japan (before it entered the War) as an official advisor for industrial design. She fell in love with the country’s open, flexible interiors; with their simplicity, harmony and emptiness.

As a result, Perriand developed a fascination with storage. She determined that an ordered environment decreased anxiety and increased quality of life.

'What is the crucial element in domestic equipment? We can answer that immediately: storage. Without well-planned storage, it is impossible to find space in one’s home.’

And so Perriand set about designing affordable storage systems with simple plastic drawers; modular shelving that liberated space. 

‘Better to spend a day in the sun than to spend it dusting our useless objects.’

Perriand worked on many projects after the War: corporate offices, mountain shelters and student housing. In 1951, having patched up her differences with Le Corbusier, she created the interiors and kitchens for the famous Unité d'habitation. She designed the League of Nations building in Geneva, the remodelling of Air France's offices in London, Paris and Tokyo.

Proposition d'une synthèse des arts, Takashimaya department store, Tokyo, 1955

5. ‘Keep Morally and Physically Fit’

Perriand was an outdoor enthusiast, and she had a special interest in ski resorts.

‘We must keep morally and physically fit. Bad luck for those who do not.’

At Les Arcs in Savoie she led a group of architects: designing a complex that nestled into the mountain; arranging the apartments in a series of staggered terraces cascading down the hillside; integrating prefabricated bathrooms and kitchens. Since guests would spend most of their time outdoors, the rooms were minimal in scale, but they looked out onto nature. 

'I love the mountains deeply. I love them because I need them. They have always been the barometer of my physical and mental equilibrium.’

Perriand died in 1999. She had designed furniture as equipment for the machine age. But her modernism was not cold and clinical. Rather it was people-centred and collaborative; warm and humane. And it changed with the times. She recognised that the West could learn from the East; and that nature had a critical part to play in the future. 

'Everything is linked, the body and the mind; mankind and the world; the earth and the sky.’

'Find a well-known hard man and start a fight.
Wear your shell suit on bonfire night.
Fill in a circular hole with a peg that's square.
But just don't sit down 'cause I've moved your chair.’

Arctic Monkeys, ‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’ (A Turner)

No. 332

Castles in the Air: Learning to Forget

Joseph Mallord William Turner - Norham Castle, on the River Tweed, c.1822–3

'Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.'
Sholem Asch

Like many people I went through various obsessions in my childhood. Heraldry, cricket-scoring, ping-pong, curling my hair. You know the sort of thing.

At one stage I was particularly fascinated by castles.

With great intensity I read all about motte-and-bailey design; about dungeons, keeps and crenellations. I dreamt of arrow slits, portcullises and concentric curtain walls; and the hole over the gatehouse to pour burning oil on attackers.

At Primary School around that time we had been studying seafaring through the ages, and our art teacher gave us the task of drawing appropriate pictures. The class set about sketching galleys and galleons with colourful sails and complex rigging; naval officers in white breeches and brass buttons; pirates with lit fuses under their hats. 

When the exercise had been completed and our efforts submitted, the teacher summoned me to the front.

‘Jim, you seem to have drawn a castle, not a ship. The assignment was all about navigation.’

‘That’s a coastal fort, Miss. It’s there to keep an eye on the boats that are coming and going through the port.’

‘Jim, I know you love castles. But sometimes you need to learn to forget.’

I read recently in The Times (15 May, ‘Brain like a Sieve?’) about a recent breakthrough made by Facebook in the field of artificial intelligence. 

Their Expire-Span method has been modelled on the naturally selective memory of the human brain. First it predicts the information most pertinent to the task in hand, and then it assigns an expiration date to less relevant data. This allows machines to selectively ‘forget’ useless information on a massive scale, freeing up memory and processing power. 

‘Our brains naturally make room for important knowledge by providing easy access for recollection, rather than overwhelming the brain with every detail.’

We are accustomed nowadays to think of memory loss as an impediment to everyday existence; as a creeping curse of later life. Perhaps it helps to regard its modest manifestations more positively - as a natural process that helps us achieve focus.

And sometimes we really need the soothing balm of forgetting – when a recollection is too traumatic; a relationship too damaging; a dispute too toxic.

'To be able to forget means sanity.'
Jack London, 'The Star Rover’

In the world of business too we should learn to forget - to cast off extraneous information and unnecessary detail; to free up memory and processing power; to focus more assuredly on the matter in hand.

I have been struck by the way that Pitch presentations are often confused by the enduring presence of earlier hypotheses that contribute nothing to the final argument. We become too attached to our observations to edit them out; too seduced by our own intelligence and insight. And so our redundant conjectures stick like barnacles to the reasoning, slowing its progress, limiting its limpidity. 

I have also observed how previous experience can sometimes constrain innovation - because it prompts conservatism and restricts our sense of what is possible.

‘We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work.’

Occasionally we must learn to forget past enthusiasms and perspectives; to set aside the obsolete and irrelevant. Selective amnesia can be liberating. 

'The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.’
Friedrich Nietzsche

Many years after my school seafaring art project, I had a blissful holiday with friends at Kingswear Castle in Dartmouth, an artillery fort built at the end of the 15th century. It had magnificent battlements and a robust stone staircase; a ghost that came out at night and a concrete blockhouse for Thommo to sleep in. And it overlooked the estuary of the River Dart – so that we could keep an eye on the boats coming and going through the port.

'And if she asks you why, you can tell her that I told you
That I'm tired of castles in the air.
I've got a dream I want the world to share
And castle walls just lead me to despair.

Save me from all the trouble and the pain.
I know I'm weak, but I can't face that girl again.
Tell her the reasons why I can't remain.
Perhaps she'll understand if you tell it to her plain.’

Don McLean, 'Castles In The Air'

No. 331

Botanical Photography: ‘A Fine Sight in the Winter’

Anna Atkins, Dictyota dichotoma

I recently visited a fascinating exhibition tracing the story of botanical photography from the 1840s to the present day. (‘Unearthed: Photography’s Roots’ is at the Dulwich Picture Gallery until 30 August.)

There is a long history of people creating impressions of plants. Thirteenth century Islamic scholars illustrated books with pressed leaves. Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the practice. In the eighteenth century Tahitian tribespeople made images by placing leaves soaked in ink from tree sap onto tapa cloth. Benjamin Franklin claimed to be the inventor of ‘nature printing’ to foil counterfeiters.

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) was one of the pioneers of modern photography. In 1834 he found that he could capture impressions of objects when he placed them in direct sunlight on paper coated with salt, water and silver nitrate. He called this process ‘photogenic drawing,’ and at the exhibition you can see his delicate images of primroses in a teacup, dahlias in a vase, a pineapple in a basket. 

'I do not claim to have perfected an art, but to have commenced one, the limits of which it is not possible at present exactly to ascertain.’
William Henry Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot - A Fruit Piece with a single pineapple

Botanist Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was an early adopter of the cyanotype process, which involved mixing two chemicals to produce a photosensitive solution. (Cyanotypes were employed to reproduce architectural drawings, hence the term ‘blueprint.’) She published twelve volumes of algae images, the first books with photographic illustrations, and helped to fuel the Victorian ‘fern craze’. Against a vivid Prussian blue background the plants have an ethereal presence, a fragile beauty. 

'The difficulty of making accurate drawings of objects so minute as many of the Algae and Confervae has induced me to avail myself of [the] beautiful process of Cyanotype, to obtain impressions of the plants themselves, which I have much pleasure in offering to my botanical friends.'
Anna Atkins

Sometimes early photographers catalogued plant life for scientific records. Sometimes they sought to recreate Dutch flower painting. And sometimes they designed images that suggested life’s transience. Subsequently they saw in plant photography compelling abstractions or resemblances to the human body. They used their pictures as inspiration for textile designs. They turned to botanical subjects to escape the ravages of war.

Broccoli Leamington, c.1895-1910 by Charles Jones. © Sean Sexton/ Dulwich Picture Gallery

Charles Jones (1866-1959), a gardener at Ote Hall in Sussex in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, took hundreds of photographs of the plants in his care using a glass plate camera. Probably self-taught, he was not recognised as a photographer in his lifetime. It was only in 1981, 22 years after his death, that a collector found a trunk of his photographs on Bermondsey Market. His images were close cropped and precisely lit – sensitive portraits of turnips, tomatoes, potatoes and broccoli; loving records of cabbages, cucumbers, celery and sugar peas. Stark and simple, they look like they come from another world.

Kazumasa Ogawa (1860-1929), the son of one of the last Samurai, belonged to a Japanese generation that embraced modernity and industry. An early master of colour photography, he adopted the chromo collotype process, creating up to 25 separate plates, one for each colour. Photographers from elsewhere in the world employing this method tended to use only 6-8 colours per picture. Even today, after progressing past gallery walls filled with black and white imagery, one is shocked to see Ogawa’s vibrant colour pictures of chrysanthemums, lotuses and lilies. Such frail elegance.

Ogawa Kazumasa: Chrysanthemum, albumen print, hand-colored, Japan c. 1890

What can we learn from all these exquisite archaic images frozen in time? 

First we can appreciate the virtues of constraint. The early photographers concentrated on plants because exposure times were around 40 minutes. Animals and people made quite challenging subjects.

Then there is the power of observation. If we scrutinise a subject, however humble; if we really examine it closely with curious eyes, it will offer up extraordinary rewards. 

And thirdly we can reflect on the fundamental capacity of pictures to communicate. In her Foreword to the exhibition catalogue, gallery director Jennifer Scott quotes a 1606 letter sent by the Flemish painter Jan Brueghel on the completion of a still life.

‘I have invested all my skill in this picture. I do not believe that so many rare and different flowers have been painted before, not rendered so painstakingly: it will be a fine sight in the winter.’

Of course, we now inhabit a visual culture where pictures are ubiquitous - so easy to create, edit and distribute. But Brueghel’s remark reminds us of the primary powers of the image: to demolish distance and time; to bring beauty to drab surroundings; to transport us to other worlds; to conjure up companionship in our loneliest moments, and sunshine in the depths of winter.

There was one final lesson that I took from the exhibition, a lesson about priorities.

Charles Jones, though a hugely gifted photographer, loved his plants first and foremost. Once a photograph had been printed, he would scratch the glass negative clean so he could use it again - or repurpose it as a cloche for his seedlings. 

'Think it over,
Life ain't a four leaf clover.
Love is a flower, from that a bud,
To spread its sunshine and make us love.’
The Emotions, ‘Flowers’ (A Bowers / R Harding / J Hibbert / C Lee / B Mitchell / L Prior / S White)

No. 330

Eileen Agar: ‘Surround Yourself with Sensitive Chaos’

Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse, 1936 (b/w photo) by Eileen Agar (private collection) / Estate of Eileen Agar

‘To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic, and to give a lie to the inconvenient world of fact.’
Eileen Agar

I recently visited an excellent retrospective of the work of Eileen Agar. (The Whitechapel Gallery, London until 29 August)

Agar rebelled against her aristocratic upbringing to pursue her own artistic path. She developed a unique style of painting that synthesised Cubism and Surrealism. Inspired by nature, she created exuberant colourful collages that revealed psychological truths. She restlessly explored new media and fresh forms of expression. She was gregarious, fun loving and playful, and she channelled her rich enthusiasms into her work. 

Let us consider what we can learn from this creative pioneer.

1. Live Your Life ‘in Revolt Against Convention’

Eileen Agar was born in Buenos Aires in 1899. Her American mother was the heir to a biscuit company, her Scottish father an industrialist. She grew up in Argentina in a privileged world ‘full of balloons, hoops and St. Bernard dogs.’ She had a pony named Strawberry Cream. And when, every two years or so, the family sailed to Britain, her mother insisted on embarking with a cow for milk and an orchestra for entertainment.

Agar attended boarding school in England and finishing school in Paris. Having walked out on her first art college because it was too academic, she studied at Brook Green and then the Slade in London. Gradually a rift developed between Agar and her parents. She didn’t want to become a debutante. She refused to take the Rolls Royce that was sent to pick her up from college each day.

'I have spent my life in revolt against convention, trying to bring colour and light and a sense of the mysterious to daily existence.’ 

2. Embrace ‘Point and Counterpoint’

In 1929 Agar moved to Paris. There she studied under the Czech Cubist, František Foltýn, and fell in with the Surrealists, André Breton and Paul Éluard.

Agar’s painting had hitherto been figurative and representational. But from now on she combined the cold logic of Cubism with the sensuous irrationality of Surrealism. 

‘The two movements interested me most. I see nothing incompatible in that, indeed we walk on two legs, and for me, one is abstract, the other Surreal – it is point and counterpoint.’

Agar painted muses and madonnas with sinuous lines, swirling shapes and vibrant hues. She depicted families and friends as bold abstractions. She distilled the turbulent forces of Winter into a mass of curves and colours. She created a woodcut of a bird that could also be seen as two lovers locked in an embrace. She represented her partner, an avid collector of precious stones, with a collage of jewels against a silhouette of his head and shoulders. Her work was relentlessly inventive.

Agar joined the English Surrealist Group and was the only British woman to take part in the famous 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London. This led to her being described thereafter as a Surrealist, a neat categorisation she would always reject.

‘The sudden attention took me by surprise. One day I was an artist exploring highly personal combinations of form and content, the next I was calmly informed I was a Surrealist.’

Eileen Agar - Surrealist Collage, 1938

3. Find Inspiration in Nature

Agar was always keen to escape city life. She took summer-holidays in Dorset and Cornwall, and wintered in Portofino and Tenerife. Once away she could immerse herself in the wonders of the natural world.

‘The earliest forms of Nature to a painter are studies in pure abstract design.’ 

Agar painted butterflies and birds; fish, insects and snakes. She made collages of squid and starfish; of elegant coral and fragile leaves. She created silhouettes of hands and faces and female forms, overlain with flowers and foliage, interwoven with classical imagery. 

‘You see the shape of a tree, the way a pebble falls or is framed, and you are astounded to discover that dumb nature makes an effort to speak to you, to give you a sign, to warn you, to symbolise your innermost thoughts.’

There is a sense that for Agar the beach represented a threshold between the conscious and the unconscious worlds; that the forest was embedded with timeless truths; that the ocean spoke of interior lives.

Eileen Agar's collage on paper, Precious Stones (1936). Courtesy of Leeds Museums and Galleries. © The estate of Eileen Agar.

4.’Surround Yourself with Sensitive Chaos’

Agar collected shells, stones, bones and fossils from the seashore. She foraged for interesting flora and fauna in the woods. She took photographs of unusual rock formations. She would often integrate her latest discoveries into her collages, a form she liked because it enabled overlay and juxtaposition: ‘a displacement of the banal by the fertile intervention of coincidence.’

But Agar’s ‘found objects’ didn’t always make their way immediately and directly into her art. She also used her collection as ongoing stimulus; as creative problem solvers.

‘I surround myself with fantastic bric-a-brac in order to trigger my imagination. For it is a certain kind of sensitive chaos that is creative, and not sterile order.’

5. ‘Yield to the Magic of Play’

Agar was an avid socialite. She studied with Cecil Beaton and Henry Moore; holidayed with Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst; drank with Dylan Thomas and Ezra Pound; partied with Roland Penrose, Lee Miller and Paul Nash. She visited Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar's home in Mougins, Alpes-Maritimes and danced on the rooftops in a transparent dress.

Agar was serious about play. She regarded it as an aid to her creativity, a liberating spiritual force.

‘Life’s meaning is lost without the spirit of play. In play all that is lovely and soaring in the human spirit strives to find expression. In play the mind is prepared to enter a world where different rules apply, to be free.’

You see Agar’s merrymaking percolating through her work. She created her Angel of Anarchy from a plaster head covered in fabric, shells, beads, diamante stones and green osprey feathers. She made her Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse from an upturned cork basket stuck with bones, coral and crustaceans. 

Eileen Agar, Untitled collage, 1936. Mixed media and collage on paper, 75.5 x 53.3 cm. Courtesy of Mayor Gallery. © Estate of Eileen Agar/Bridgeman Images

6. Recognise the Restorative Power of the Outdoors

Inevitably, with the onset of World War II Agar’s hedonism and optimism were diminished. She was a pacifist, and pitched in as a canteen assistant and a fire-watcher at night. She helped friends fleeing persecution and those made homeless by the Blitz. But she found it hard to create. And what art she did make was anxious and downbeat.

‘How does one communicate with any subtlety when the world is being deafened by explosions?’

After the war Agar gradually emerged from her melancholy through a diet of work, travel and spending time outdoors. 

‘I had been too long cut off from the world of nature, too cooped up, too cribbed and confined, and the relief of finding one’s roots responding to the quickening pulse of vegetation, the vast mountainscapes, the sea horizons, all this made me fall in love with the mountainous dew-drop in the ocean and I revived and could work again.’

Eileen Agar, Angel of Anarchy 1936-40 © The Estate of Eileen Agar

Agar continued to paint, draw and make collages. In the 1950s she experimented with spontaneous art, pouring paint with free swirling actions to create loose, fluid imagery. In the 1960s she embraced the versatility of acrylic paints. Between 1946 and 1985 she had 16 solo exhibitions. And in 1986, aged 87, she modelled dresses for Issey Miyake. 

Eileen Agar died in 1991, a month shy of her 92nd birthday. She had been creating for seventy years. 

Agar had a restless mind; an insatiable appetite for new ideas and fresh perspectives. She resisted categorisation. She found beauty, inspiration and relief in the natural world. And she responded to it with work that spoke of freedom and boundless possibility.

'One must have a hunger for new colour, new shapes and new possibilities of discovery.' 

'Come with me, my love
To the sea,
The sea of love.
I want to tell you
How much I love you.’

Cat Power, ’Sea of Love’ (P Baptiste / G Khoury)

No. 329

Disruptive Dreams: A Tour of France with My Brother, Two Mates and Van Morrison

‘If my heart could do my thinking
And my head began to feel,
Would I look upon the world anew,
And know what's truly real?’
Van Morrison, ‘I Forgot that Love Existed’

Some time in the late 1980s I went on a road trip round France with my brother Martin and friends Mike and Thommo. 

Crammed into a small, silver Citroen AX, with our sports bags strapped to the roof and with nothing booked, we disembarked at Calais and plotted a path towards the Loire Valley. 

Since Martin and I were feeling flush, each night we shared a room in a modest hotel, while Mike and Thommo settled for the local campsite. When the four of us reported at the first establishment and requested ‘une chambre a deux lits,’ the proprietor was somewhat challenged. Martin, realising the misunderstanding, gestured towards Mike and Thommo and explained:

‘Non, ils font le camping!’

We started each day with strong coffee, golden croissants, President butter and apricot jam, and each evening we feasted on quite extraordinary food and wine - whether at a smart local restaurant or a truck drivers’ cafe. 

‘Fruits de mer et confit de canard, s’il vous plait.’

Thommo couldn’t cope with the unrelenting richness of the meals, and so we took one night off, settling for local ‘Loveburgers’ washed down by 1664. 

We moved on to the Vendée and the Dordogne, through the Auvergne and up to Burgundy, Alsace and Lorraine. And at each new location I dusted off the remnants of my O-Level French.

‘Pardon, maisonette, je n’ai pas de la monnaie.’

‘Ah, c’est l’année des guêpes!'

We explored lush green landscapes, rugged mountain roads and bleak grey hamlets. We encountered old men playing boules on village squares and young men playing baby-foot in late night bars. We avoided one town because on approach it seemed to be very smelly. Only later did we realise that we’d been following a sewage lorry round a ring road.

We were accompanied on the trip by Van Morrison’s elegiac ‘Poetic Champions Compose’ album, on repeat play. It seemed entirely appropriate.

'You're the queen of the slipstream with eyes that shine.
You have crossed many waters to be here.
You have drunk of the fountain of innocence.
And experienced the long cold wintry years.’
‘The Queen of the Slipstream’

On the long journeys Scouse Mike would amuse himself by hanging his head out of the car window. And when the two campers returned to their site each night, he insisted that Thommo stay up into the early hours drinking cheap warm red wine from plastic bottles.

Inevitably on a holiday of this nature, although we were pretty much aligned in terms of evening adventures, there were some disagreements about how to spend the daytime. Martin and I were interested in churches and chateaux. Thommo leaned towards nature and wildlife. Mike just wanted to have fun. 

To accommodate Mike we took in a terrifying luge trip down a mountainside. And when we visited the tomb of Eleanor of Aquitaine at the magnificent abbey at Fontevrault, he persuaded Thommo to stay outside and play footie. On another occasion he took over the map, and, without conferring, navigated us to a beach crowded with locals in skimpy trunks and bikinis. This was not my natural habitat. In protest I sat on a towel fully clothed with my top button done up. 

'Let go into the mystery.
Let yourself go.
You've got to open up your heart,
That's all I know.
Trust what I say and do what you're told,
Baby, and all your dirt will turn
Into gold.'
‘The Mystery’

We all look back on the holidays of our youth with great fondness. These were simple, carefree, happy times. And perhaps our exploits were all the more special because they were characterised by surprise, serendipity and strangeness. Everything seemed mysterious.

I read recently (The Guardian 14 May ‘Weird Dreams’) about a new theory of dreams.

Dreams have long fascinated scientists and psychoanalysts. Freud believed they were ‘disguised fulfilments of repressed desires.’ And through the years experts have variously hypothesized that they help us process our emotions; consolidate our recollections; make creative connections between memories; and practice our survival skills.

Erik Hoel, a research assistant professor of neuroscience at Tufts University in Massachusetts, has proposed that, by introducing the strange and bizarre to our habituated existence, dreams equip us to cope with the unexpected.

His theory was inspired by the field of machine learning. Artificial intelligence often becomes too familiar with the data with which it’s been coached, assuming that this ‘training set’ is a perfect representation of anything it may subsequently encounter. To remedy this, scientists introduce some chaos into the data in the form of noisy or corrupted inputs.

Hoel suggests that our brains do something similar when we dream.  

‘It is the very strangeness of dreams in their divergence from waking experience that gives them their biological function.’

This suggests to me that we should think seriously about the role of the unusual and unfamiliar in our lives. 

Perhaps we should more actively embrace strange and bizarre events in our personal and professional worlds; not just in our dreams or on holiday, but in our day-to-day experience. Maybe we should use the weird and wonderful to ward off the narrowing perspectives brought on by habit, custom and age. Maybe we would do well to regard disruption, not just as a revolutionary market force; but as a necessary part of our daily regime.

Despite our excellent gastronomic adventures, by the last night of our tour of France I was pining for some familiar food. Spotting ‘fromage blanc’ on the menu, I assumed it was cheddar and ordered it with eager anticipation. When it arrived it was worryingly soft and smelly. 

I ate it nonetheless.

'I've been searching a long time
For someone exactly like you.
I've been travelling all around the world
Waiting for you to come through.
Someone like you,
Makes it all worth while.
Someone like you
Keeps me satisfied.
Someone exactly like you.’
Van Morrison, ‘Someone Like You’

No 328

Blue Note: Making Uncertainty Your Ally

‘The one thing that all the greats did was never let go of who they are, never turn away from who they are and their experiences – because your experiences, and what you’ve been through in your life, make you sound the way you sound.’
Robert Glasper

I recently watched Sophie Huber’s fine documentary ‘Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes.’ It tells the tale of the seminal jazz label from its founding myths through to the present day.

Blue Note is crazy chords, taught rhythms and truthful testimony. It is bop and hard bop, soul jazz and fusion; unapologetic, fresh and vital. It is sharp suits, narrow neckties and button-down shirts; clouds of cigarette smoke in darkened rooms. It is the founding spirit of Alfred and Frank, the recording genius of Rudy Van Gelder, the graphic art of Reid Miles. It is Lee Morgan’s ‘Sidewinder’ and Hank Mobley’s ‘Soul Station;’ Wayne Shorter’s ‘Speak No Evil’ and Horace Silver’s ‘Song for My Father.’ It is Herbie Hancock on his ‘Maiden Voyage,’ Art Blakey ‘Moanin’’ and Sonny Clark ‘Cool Struttin’’. Blue Note is Thelonius Monk, Sonny Rollins and Grant Green. It is struggle, hope and, above all, it is freedom.

The documentary weaves together Blue Note’s history with insights from the titans of its golden age and observations from its current crop of talented artists. Jazz musicians seem such an intelligent, articulate bunch. There’s a great deal that anyone working in a creative profession can learn by reflecting on their words.

Learning from the Founders 

1. Follow Your Uncomprehending Affection

Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff first heard jazz when they were boyhood friends growing up in 1920s Berlin. 

‘My mother bought a record home. I was very impressed by what I heard. Not knowing that it was jazz or what it was all about, but I got very interested in the record.’
Alfred Lion

Fleeing Nazi oppression, Lion and Wolff both settled in New York in the late ‘30s. They followed their passion and set up Blue Note Records in 1939, initially recording in rented studios. 

 2. Pursue Quality, Not Success

Lion and Wolff had a slow start and for years made little money. Their releases focused on traditional and hot jazz, boogie woogie and swing - artists like pianist Meade Lux Lewis and saxophonist Sidney Bechet. They were happy to record musicians that other labels did not consider commercial. Thelonius Monk’s sound was thought incredibly challenging at the time. But Blue Note nurtured his talent. They were pursuing quality rather than sales success.

‘Any record we ever made we weren’t really figuring on a hit. If later on it became successful, it just happened to become successful.’
Alfred Lion

3. Trust the Creators to Create and the Managers to Manage

Lion and Wolff were fans, not musicians. They were sufficiently self-aware to engage saxophonist Ike Quebec to spot upcoming talent. Soon the label roster also boasted drummer Art Blakey, pianist Bud Powell and trumpeter Clifford Brown. 

When it came to recording, the founders trusted the creators to create. 

‘I never got a sense of pressure from them to create in any particular way, other than whatever might come out of me.’
Herbie Hancock

Blue Note’s faith in its recording artists set it apart in a cut-throat industry. 

‘All the record companies were white – cheap, cheap white too. They was a bunch of scoundrels. I should name them, but I won’t. But not Alfred. Alfred was not like that. He just let us do what we wanted to do.... And he didn’t bother musicians.’
Lou Donaldson 

Trust worked both ways. Once recording was complete, the artists were happy to let the producers take over.

‘At the end of the session everyone said that’s the good music, including the musicians. That was the end of the musicians’ involvement. They trusted Alfred, who trusted me. And that’s how it went.’
Rudy Van Gelder

4. Creation Needs Craft

Rudy Van Gelder was recording engineer on most Blue Note releases between 1953 and the late sixties. Up until 1959 his studio was the living room of his parents’ home in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Van Gelder knew that creation needs craft. He employed cutting edge equipment and recording methods. And great consideration was given to establishing the right environment. Musicians were paid for rehearsal time - unusual in those days - and recording sessions were scheduled for the early hours of the morning, after late-night club venues had closed. 

‘Prestige was alright. Savoy, they liked jazz. But they didn’t press it and put it out like Alfred. The sound was better. The musicians were better.’
Lou Donaldson

In 1959 Blue Note moved to a new state-of-the-art facility in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, the studio had very high ceilings and was often mistaken for a church.

 5. Though Product Is Paramount, Presentation Has a Critical Role to Play

Joining the label in 1956, Reid Miles designed almost 500 Blue Note record sleeves in 15 years. 

Miles gave the label a coherent look that matched its sound. Blue Note sleeves had tightly cropped photography (employing candid shots taken by Wolff), with abstract colour blocks and bold typefaces set at rakish angles. They were audacious, modern and cool. 

Though product was paramount at Blue Note, presentation played a critical role in the label’s success.

Learning from the Musicians

1. ‘Never Let Go of Who You Are’

Blue Note sought first and foremost to articulate authenticity of individual experience.

‘What they were searching for was to get the heart of the individuals creating the music, to have a platform for expression. And the heart is effected by the times, because we were living in it.’
Herbie Hancock

The golden age of Blue Note coincided with the height of the Civil Rights struggle. The records were not politically explicit, but they were politically charged. The music consistently communicated strength and determination, hope and freedom.

 ‘A lot of this music has to do with how we feel about America. And how we came from seeming to progress, to going back to an era that we fought to get away from.’
Marcus Stickland

2. ‘Make Uncertainty Your Ally’

Improvisation is a central part of jazz culture and working practice. Blue Note artists recognised the creative value of doubt and vulnerability; of risk and uncertainty. Improvisation enables innovation.

‘It takes some kind of courage and fearlessness. And the challenge to be vulnerable is a challenge itself.’
Wayne Shorter

‘The more you challenge yourself to muster up the courage, the more the uncertainty becomes your ally.’
Herbie Hancock

A key to successful improvisation is abstracting yourself from extraneous concerns and ‘submitting to the now.’

‘The feeling that I get when I’m really improvising with other people who are really improvising is … something that always feels like it’s a step, or a half step, away from me… I know that you get closer to it by not living in the past or the future – just sort of submitting to the now.’
Ambrose Akinmusire

3. ‘Be a Leader Who Trains Leaders’

 ‘You can’t hide behind your instrument.’
Art Blakey

Art Blakey was a natural born leader. When in 1954 a Blue Note All-Star line-up was booked to play New York’s Birdland, he slipped the announcer Pee Wee Marquette a couple of notes, and Blakey was introduced as the head of the band.

And yet Blakey also encouraged others to lead. Throughout his career he urged band members, like Wayne Shorter and Horace Silver, to graduate to marshalling their own outfits. He was happy to manage fluid ensembles and to accommodate the occasional loss of knowledge and skills.

‘Art Blakey was a university to himself. And a lot of musicians that came through his band actually became leaders. He was a leader who trained leaders.’
Kendrick Scott

Jazz ensembles are often informally led. They accommodate, and even embrace, tension and discord, because these qualities contribute to the entity’s unique energy.

4. Creativity Is Incomplete without an Audience

Of course, music is nothing without an audience to hear it.

‘What’s contained on the record itself is incomplete. Because it doesn’t include the process of the person listening to it and how it effects them.’ 
Herbie Hancock

But audiences and industries can be fickle. In 1963 Blue Note recorded a significant hit with the title track of Lee Morgan’s ‘The Sidewinder’ album, and Horace Silver did the same the following year with ‘Song for My Father.’

Perversely, distributors then put pressure on the label to come up with similar successes. Lion and Wolff became exhausted with it all and in 1965 they sold Blue Note to Liberty Records. Lion, who disliked the corporate environment, retired in 1967. Wolff stayed on, but passed away in 1972.

5. ‘Work on Your Humanity as Well as Your Creativity’

Blue Note continued. And in the ‘80s and ‘90s it had something of a renaissance when hip hop artists recognised it as a kindred spirit and made extensive use of Blue Note samples. 

‘I found out looking at my royalties.’
Lou Donaldson

The documentary features interviews and performances from today’s Blue Note All-Stars. As this new generation collaborates with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, they observe the special dynamic that is at play.

‘I saw how each individual relinquished the leadership and, being in a band situation with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, I immediately want to relinquish it to them. But they’re waiting for me to do something. They want to see what you have to offer. And to frame that picture for you.’
Kendrick Scott

On the one hand, since jazz is all about finding authentic individual expression, it is a supremely egotistical art form. On the other hand, it involves the integration of the individual within the collective. It demands selflessness.

‘It’s something that’s very important in a jazz group is that everybody has a voice.’
Kendrick Scott

Aware of such paradoxes, the contemporary Blue Note artists come across as reflective and spiritual.

‘It all comes down to managing the ego in a way that allows the music to really come out. People like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, they allow the music to flow through…They work on their humanity as well as their music.’
Marcus Strickland

I left the documentary concluding that modern business could learn a great deal from jazz: about the integration of individuality within a coherent community; about improvisation as a force for innovation; about more fluid leadership styles; and developing a proper engagement with risk and uncertainty. 

We often think of jazz as rather intellectual and po-faced. These artists are certainly serious about their craft. They are obsessed with consistently delivering to the highest standard and constantly pioneering new frontiers. But they also display natural informality and disarming humour.

In a moment of downtime Herbie Hancock enters the studio with an awkward shuffle. He calls across to Wayne Shorter.

Herbie: Hey, Wayne, who’s this?

Herbie shuffles some more.

Wayne: That’s Frank.

Herbie: If you played and Frank was dancing that was the take. If he wasn’t dancing that was not the take. A little shuffle – it had nothing to do with the beat.

'Blow me a kiss from across the room,
Say I look nice when I'm not.
Touch my hair as you pass my chair,
Little things mean a lot.
Give me your arm as we cross the street,
Call me at six on the dot.
A line a day when you're far away,
Little things mean a lot.’

Dodo Greene, ‘Little Things Mean a Lot’ (E Lindeman / C Stutz)

No. 327

Dubuffet: Waging a War Against Cultural Conditioning

Jean Dubuffet - 'Landscape with Argus' 1955

‘Millions of possibilities of expression exist outside the accepted cultural avenues.’
Jean Dubuffet

I recently visited an excellent exhibition of the work of French painter Jean Dubuffet. (‘Brutal Beauty’ is at the Barbican, London until 22 August.)

Dubuffet was a singularly independent thinker. He rebelled against established artistic norms. He celebrated art created by people not considered artists. He worked with materials, processes and concepts that expanded our understanding of what art could be. He created new worlds of beauty and meaning. He was an outsider.

'Without bread we die of hunger, but without art we die of boredom.’

Let us consider what Dubuffet teaches us about the creative mindset.

1. Reject ‘Cultural Conditioning’

Dubuffet was born in Le Havre in 1901 to a family of wine merchants. In 1918 he moved to Paris to study painting at the Académie Julian. After just six months he packed it all in, finding the formal training too restrictive and conservative. 

Henceforth Dubuffet spent a lifetime kicking against what he regarded as ‘cultural conditioning.’

'Our culture is like a garment that does not fit us, or in any case no longer fits us. This culture is like a dead language that no longer has anything in common with the language of the street. It is increasingly alien to our lives.’

Dubuffet travelled to Italy and Brazil, pursued his own studies in music, poetry, and languages. And when he returned to France in 1925, he established himself as a vintner in Paris. Over the next twenty years, he rarely picked up a paintbrush. 

2. Seek Creativity ‘in its Pure and Elementary State’

Since the 1920s Dubuffet had been interested in art created by psychiatric patients, prisoners and children. He admired the honesty, directness and vitality that he saw in such work, and applauded the fact that it didn’t adhere to any tradition or movement. He coined the term Art Brut (‘raw art’) for work produced by non-professionals outside aesthetic norms. And in 1948 he co-founded the Compagnie de l’Art Brut, which collected more than 1,200 pieces by over 100 artists for its ‘museum without walls.’

Art Brut embraced a diverse set of styles and themes. At the Barbican exhibition you can see Madge Gill’s elegant pen and ink designs of fashionable women; Auguste Forestier’s characterful carved wooden beast; and Laura Pigeon’s mournful blue abstracts. There are dense graphic patterns, architectural constructions, psychedelic creatures and a collage map of France.

‘It is my belief that only in this Art Brut can we find the natural and normal processes of artistic creation in their pure and elementary state.’

3. ‘Plug into the Present’

Inspired by the sights of war-ravaged Paris, Dubuffet took up painting again in 1942. He made lithographic prints that looked like defaced walls. Over formal text from French and German newspapers, he scrawled graffiti suggestive of secret Resistance messages.

‘The key is under the shutter.’
‘I’ve been thinking of you.’ 

Dubuffet was determined that his art should respond to the real world, not to any artistic fashion or convention.

‘I aim for an art that is directly plugged into our current life.’

Jean Dubuffet - Wall with Inscriptions, April 1945

4. Embrace the Editorial Power of Memory

In the late ‘40s Dubuffet developed his own primitive style of portraiture. Having spent hours staring at a sitter, he withdrew to his studio and painted entirely from recollection, creating what he called ‘a likeness burst in memory’. His work was cartoonish, childlike and raw, focusing on a few distinguishing features, rather than seeking to capture a detailed resemblance. 

'In portraits you need a lot of general, very little of specific.’

5. Employ Unorthodox Materials

Dubuffet liked to work with unconventional materials. He mixed thick oil paint with sand and cement, pebbles and plaster, string and straw, glass and gravel. He applied razor blades and sandpaper to the paste, scratching and slashing it to give it texture. 

'Mud, rubbish and dirt are man's companions all his life. Shouldn't they be precious to him, and isn't one doing man's service to remind him of their beauty?'

Dubuffet also experimented with ‘assemblage’, creating collages with found materials; with butterfly wings or remnants of previous paintings. He made figures from steel wool, charcoal, vines and lava stone; from the debris of a burnt-out car.

'Art should be born from the materials.’

6. Explore the Landscape of the Mind

Between 1947 and 1949 Dubuffet travelled to Algeria for inspiration. He learned Arabic and lived with Bedouin communities in the desert. On his return to Paris, with the aid of his sketchbooks, he sought to capture the spirit of the places he had visited.

'Art addresses itself to the mind, and not to the eyes.’

Dubuffet’s landscapes were brimful of mysterious patterns, shapes and contours, the horizon relegated to a thin distant strip at the top of the canvas. He believed that these paintings could articulate interior as well as exterior truths.

‘I have been concerned to represent, not the objective world, but what it becomes in our thoughts.’

Jean Dubuffet - ‘Landscape in Metamorphosis’

7. Think Micro Macro

In 1957, prompted by his time in Vence, Dubuffet embarked on his ‘Texturology’ paintings. He adopted a technique used by Tyrolean stonemasons, which involved shaking a branch loaded with paint over fresh plaster in order to soften its colour. The tiny spattered dots in subtle shades of cream, brown and grey suggested both the delicate beauty of a microscopic world and the infinite allure of the cosmos.

‘Teeming matter, alive and sparkling, could represent a piece of ground … but also evoke all kinds of indeterminate texture, and even galaxies and nebulae.’

Jean Dubuffet - 'The Exemplary Life of the Soil (Texturology LXIII)’, 1958

8. 'Start All Over Again from the Beginning’

In 1961 Dubuffet returned to Paris and realised that he needed a fresh start.

‘I live locked up in my studio doing - guess what? - paintings in the spirit and manner of those I was making in 1943. I have decided to start all over again from the beginning.’ 

Dubuffet set about capturing the vibrant spirit of what he called the ‘Paris Circus’: the posters, traffic, restaurants and bars – an urban realm of chaotic, colourful energy.

‘I want my street to be crazy, my broad avenues, shops and buildings to join in a crazy dance.’

9. Find Inspiration in the Unconscious

In 1963 Dubuffet was inspired to take another new direction by some doodles he made during a telephone call. In his ‘L’Hourloupe’ series he created his own highly stylized graphic world of fluid shapes, coloured in with blue and red stripes; of twisting and turning jigsaw figures, full of vim and vigour.

'It is the unreal that enchants me now.’

Next Dubuffet breathed life into this doodle-universe by inventing a one-hour spectacle, ‘Coucou Bazar.’ He choreographed ‘theatrical props’ -  some static, some powered by motors - with live dancers, dramatic lighting and a musical accompaniment  - which he stipulated should be ‘brutally loud with abrupt interruptions of silence.’

Jean Dubuffet - ’Skedaddle'

10. Let the Imagination Bleed into the Everyday

’The things we dearly love, which form the basis of our being, we generally never look at.'

In the late ‘70s Dubuffet returned to assemblage. For his ‘Theatres of Memory’ series he created enormous collages with layered fragments of old paintings. Crude cartoon characters jostle with bold abstract shapes and colours. Trees and masks are enmeshed with fierce monochrome patterns. 

When they were exhibited in New York in 1979, these works inspired a new generation of artists, including Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

Dubuffet said he was concerned with how our imagination bleeds into our impressions of the everyday world. 

'What interests me about thought is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas, but its earlier stages.’

Dubuffet died from emphysema in 1985. He was 83. He had endeavoured to return art to untutored primitivism. Constantly reinventing his process and style, he sought relentlessly to explore interior and exterior truths; to blur the boundaries between the psychological and the real, the micro and the macro.  And in so doing he created magical worlds of beauty and vitality. 

'For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.’

Above all, Dubuffet raged against tradition and taste, custom and convention: what others decree as ‘normal’. Creativity should not follow any prescribed path or respect any established practice. It should be an unshackled expression of self. 

’There is only one way of being normal, and a hundred million ways of not being normal.’

'Express yourself.
Express yourself.
You don't ever need help from nobody else.
All you got to do now,
Express yourself.
Whatever you do,
Do it good.
Whatever you do, do, do, 
Do it good, all right.
It's not what you look like
When you're doin', what you're doin’.
It's what you're doin', when you're doin'
What you look like you're doin’.
Express yourself.
Express yourself.’

Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, 'Express Yourself’ (C Wright)

No. 326