‘Trying to Trap the Fact’: The Distorted Truth of Francis Bacon

Head VI

‘We are all animals if you care to think about it. It’s just that some people are more aware of the fact than others.’
Francis Bacon

I recently visited an excellent exhibition of the work of Francis Bacon. (‘Man and Beast’ is at the Royal Academy, London until 17 April.)

It was an unsettling experience.

Bacon painted crucified carcases, snarling Furies, beast-people caught in cuboid cages; dogs, chimpanzees and owls trapped and snared, howling and baying; bullfights, bestial heads and screaming Popes; writhing, twisting, tormented lovers; butchered meat, muscle and sinew, blood and bone. 

‘We are meat, we are potential carcases.’

Bacon’s work was all physical pain and mental anguish; violence and voyeurism. He wanted to convey to us that the veneer of civilisation is thin and fragile; that we are driven by carnal impulses; that we are essentially beasts. He revealed the animal within, caught between rage and fear, in tortured isolation. His aim, he said, was to ‘unlock the valves of feeling and return the onlooker to life more violently.’

Sometimes the horror in his paintings is brought home by the presence of the everyday: of flowers, umbrellas and hats; of chaises longues and tubular steel furniture. (Bacon spent a brief period in the late 1920s as an interior designer.) This is the banality of evil.

‘Most people live a kind of veiled life and tend to disguise what they are, what they want, what they really feel.’

Fragment of a Cucifixion

Bacon’s fascination with man’s animal nature and his dark vision of life were perhaps shaped by his upbringing in County Kildare, Ireland. Born in 1909, he was the son of a retired army officer who trained horses, had a violent temper and a taste for field sports. The young Bacon suffered from chronic asthma, a condition that was triggered and amplified by contact with animals. 

‘The whole horror of life, of one thing living off another.’

No doubt Bacon was also influenced by the slaughter of World War I; by the debauchery he saw in the clubs, bars and brothels of Berlin and Paris between the wars; by his time spent as an ARP warden during the Blitz, recovering bodies from London bomb sites; by consciousness of the Holocaust and the atom bomb; by his trips to the bush in southern Africa; by his adventures in the dark alleys of Soho.

‘I have looked at books of wild animals… because those images excite me and every so often one of them may come up to me and suggest some way to use the human body.’

Bacon was also inspired by his diverse interests. He was an enthusiast for art history, admiring Michelangelo, Velazquez, Rembrandt and Goya. He treasured Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering studies of animal motion. He read anatomical texts and medical manuals, magazines of wildlife photography and books on big game hunting and bullfighting. He had a passion for Egyptology and classical literature.

‘Reading translations of Aeschylus opens up the valves of sensation for me.’

Study of a Dog 1952

Bacon channelled all this stimulus into his work. For example, his repeated representations of a primal scream were informed by Poussin’s ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ and the terror-stricken shriek of the nursemaid in Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin.’

‘I did hope one day to make the best painting of the human cry.’

I was particularly struck by the lateral leaps Bacon took from inspiration to execution. A 17th century Velasquez painting of Pope Innocent X, in all his pomp and power, becomes an expression of existential pain and panic. A barn owl in flight becomes a crucified figure. A diving pelican becomes a Fury. Two wrestlers become two lovers. 

There is a lesson for us all here. We should not expect inspiration to be literal and logical. Rather it catches us off guard, from out of left field. It creeps up on us where and when we least expect it. We often talk about creative leaps. Strategists must leap too.

At first Bacon’s work seems all contorted, twisted and warped. But then we realise that with all this distortion he is seeking to capture a brutal truth about sensation. What he is saying is crystal clear.

‘I think the very great artists were not trying to express themselves. They were trying to trap the fact.’

'I never thought that this day would ever come
When your words and your touch just struck me numb.
Oh and it's plain to see that it's dead.
The thing swims in blood and it's cold stoney dead.
It's so hard not to feel ashamed
Of the loving, living games we play
Each day.
The hardest walk you could ever take
Is the walk you take from A to B to C.’

The Jesus and Mary Chain, 'The Hardest Walk’ (J & W Reid)

No. 360

NDT2: Living Life at 1.5x Speed

The Big Crying, choreographed by by Marco Goecke. Photo by Rahi Rezvani

'Speed is irrelevant if you are going in the wrong direction.’
Mahatma Gandhi

I recently attended an excellent evening of dance performed by NDT2 at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. (NDT2 is on tour in the UK and Ireland until 7 May.)

NDT2, the junior company of the Nederlands Dans Theatre, comprises international graduates aged between 20 and 26. The young dancers are athletic, disciplined, graceful and cool. They attack their work with fierce energy and unconstrained joy. 

I was particularly struck by a new piece, ‘The Big Crying,’ choreographed by German Marco Goecke. 

19 dancers enact a series of everyday tasks and pastimes in a state of high anxiety. They get up, get dressed, commute and work. They meet, talk, argue and embrace. Their movements are jagged, jerky, juddering. Their mood is frenetic, fractious, fractured. There are occasional outbursts of laughing or screaming. Everything is speeded up.

You sense that these characters have repressed their emotions. Their gestures are somewhat robotic. They are going through the motions, propelled at high velocity by force of habit. And yet they are unable to extract any joy from their activities; incapable of properly connecting with each other. 

The dance is set to the mournful music of Tori Amos - which reinforces the sense of withdrawal and abstraction. 

Goecke created this haunting piece after the death of his father. He appears to be articulating the isolation of grief, the seeming senselessness of carrying on. At its climax a solitary male dancer slows down and adopts a reflective pose. Has he at last found some solace?

NDT2 dancers Barry Fans and Rui-Ting Yu in The Big Crying, choreographed by by Marco Goecke. Photo Tristram Kenton

'I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant.’
Bob Newhart

I read an article in the Times recently about the trend amongst young people to consume life at fast-forward. (‘Why Gen Z are on Speed’, 14 February 2022.) It reported that they are watching their lectures at 1.5x speed. They’re skipping through books, skimming through voice notes, scrolling through films. They’re accelerating past the boring bits, jumping on to the chorus, hopping ahead to the highlights.

Of course we live in an accelerated culture. With increasing distraction and diminishing attention, we all want instant gratification. And we want it now.

It’s easy to dismiss some of these behaviours as juvenile, daft or mentally damaging. You clearly can’t properly appreciate a good book or film at 1.5x speed. Surely life dictates its own natural tempo.

'The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.'
Milan Kundera, ‘Slowness’

Nonetheless, I do understand the inclination to compress and stretch time to accommodate our changing priorities, needs and desires - and to use technology as an accomplice in achieving this.

Mikaela Kelly and Jesse Callaert in The Big Crying. Photo Rahi Rezvani

I can recall many meetings and presentations where I would have welcomed a fast-forward button. In the world of work, superior time management often separates the leaders from the followers. Saving time creates space and opportunity for more important things. Saving time wins races.

We should perhaps encourage our colleagues to manipulate time; to accelerate through the tactical and marginal tasks, while lingering on the critical creative and strategic questions. We should all endeavour to process at speed and reflect at leisure. Rather than be victims of time, we should make it our ally.

'Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.'
Aldous Huxley


'You're such a pinball, you know it's true.
There's always something you come back running to,
To follow the path of no resistance.
It's just a brief smile crossing your face,
Running speed trials standing in place.'
Elliot Smith, 'Speed Trials’ (S Smith)

No. 359

Triumphing over Torture: A Lesson from Saint Lawrence at the Courtauld Gallery

Saint Lawrence by the Master of the Fogg Pieta

I recently visited the newly refurbished Courtauld Gallery in London.

It’s a joy to wander up the elegant spiral staircase, through light, open rooms with ornamental plasterwork, to admire again the fabulous collection of masterpieces from medieval to modern times. 

I have always particularly enjoyed medieval galleries. The glistening gold of the altarpieces, the florid decoration of the illuminated manuscripts, the defiance of perspective. The arcane symbolism, the demons and devils, the obscure stories of intrepid saints, tragic martyrs and devout patrons.

This time my attention was drawn to a fourteenth century painting of Saint Lawrence by the Master of the Fogg Pieta. Lawrence is shown with neatly groomed hair in his blue clerical outfit. He carries a red book in one hand and a large iron griddle in the other.

Lawrence was a Deacon of Rome in the third century and had particular responsibility for overseeing the church’s property and possessions. When the Emperor Valerian determined to suppress Christianity, his Prefect in Rome demanded that Lawrence hand over the church’s wealth. Lawrence quickly distributed the assets to the poor, and, after three days, reported to the Prefect with a group of the old, infirm and impoverished. These people, he declared, were the true treasures of the church.

The Prefect was so angry that he had Lawrence strapped to a gridiron and roasted over hot coals. In the middle of his ordeal Lawrence cheerfully cried:

'I'm well done on this side. Turn me over!'

Lawrence was subsequently appointed patron saint of cooks and comedians.

Saint Stephen by Carlo Crivelli

There’s something of a tradition in medieval art of depicting martyrs with the instruments of their torture and death. Saint Stephen is painted with the stones that killed him, Peter the Martyr with a cleaver in his head. Saint Catherine is shown with the breaking wheel to which she was submitted, Apollonia with the pliers that removed her teeth. (She is the patron saint of dentists.) Saint Bartholomew is presented holding aloft his own skin. He was flayed to death.

'The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.'
Soren Kierkegaard

St Catherine of Alexandria. Vittore Crivelli (c.1444–1501 or later)

I have occasionally reflected that if I had my portrait painted I would like to be accompanied by the instruments of my own professional torture. A set of timesheets perhaps, to recall the tedious pressure to make sense of the working week. Or a bowl of M&Ms, to commemorate the hours spent watching focus groups. Or a set of traffic lights, to indicate the persecution of pre-tests. Or a flip chart, or a Diet Coke, or an ice-breaker exercise (not sure how to represent this). Or that costume they made me wear for a team-building task.

'It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.’
Napoleon Bonaparte

The martyrs of yore may have a lesson for us today. Theirs is a story of belief and perseverance. Sustained by their unwavering faith, they triumphed over torture. They defeated death.

If we can maintain our belief in the power of creativity and the primacy of the idea - if we can hold tight to our principles and keep our eyes on the prize - then surely we can overcome our daily trials and tribulations, the grinding pressure to compromise and concede, the gravitational pull towards sensible mediocrity. We can become martyrs to the work.

'At school they taught me how to be
So pure in thought and word and deed.
They didn't quite succeed.
For everything I long to do,
No matter when or where or who,
Has one thing in common too.
It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin.’

The Pet Shop Boys ‘It’s a Sin’ (C Lowe, N Tennant)

No. 358

Maurice Broomfield: Making Drama Out of Industry

Museum number: E.3731-2007 © Estate of Maurice Broomfield

‘Visual interpretation of industry can be as glamorous as fashion photography.’
Maurice Broomfield, publicity booklet

I recently attended an excellent exhibition of the work of post-war industrial photographer, Maurice Broomfield. (‘Industrial Sublime’ is at the V&A, London until 6 November, 2022.)

Broomfield saw romance in steel works, chemical plants and cooling towers. He found beauty in bottling lines, paper mills and shipyards. He identified heroes in glass blowers, weavers and welders. He celebrated manufacturing infrastructure, mechanical engineering and applied science. Through his outstanding imagery he created what he called ‘industrial ballet.’

‘I felt it was necessary to make the best of what we were good at and sell our products.’

Born in the village of Borrowash, Derbyshire in 1916, Broomfield was the only child of a lace designer and grew up in modest circumstances. Having left school at 15, he worked as a lathe operator at Rolls-Royce in Derby and in the evenings he studied at Derby College of Art. 

‘[My mother] always wanted me to be a clerical worker in a clean shirt… Instead, I put on overalls, went to work in a factory and promptly got covered in oil.’

Taper Roller Bearing, 1957, Broomfield, Maurice

This led to a job as a graphic designer at Rowntree’s, the confectioners in York, a position that was interrupted by the Second World War. A conscientious objector, Broomfield served as a driver in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, based in Whitechapel, East London.

‘I started out thinking ‘What shall I do in life?’ I was looking for something that would give me that satisfaction of a purposeful way of life. In a way I spent so long looking around that I realised that perhaps my career was actually finding out what other people do.’

After the war Broomfield set up his own commercial photographic studio in Highgate, specialising in industrial subjects. He was commissioned by the likes of ICI and the Milk Marketing Board to provide images for trade reports and advertising at a time when British business was looking to project a progressive, future-facing impression.

In those days industrial photography was characterised by banal shots of grey factories or dull close-ups of esoteric equipment. Broomfield determined to take a different approach. He selected machinery, apparatus, gear and tools that offered abstract interest and sculptural beauty. He stripped away the clutter and carefully framed, staged and lit his subjects. And he shone a spotlight on the skilled craftspeople bent at their tasks in fixed concentration.

Portrait of Maurice with MG car, about 1955, England. © Nick Broomfield, 2021. Reproduced with permission from Nick Broomfield

‘When taking an industrial photograph, the subject should be carefully selected and concentrated upon to show it as dramatically as possible. To do this light should be used in the same way that a brush might be in painting to build up the subject matter in tonal gradations.’

Broomfield was so meticulous that he would have walls repainted to create a better mood, close a production line to get a better image, shoot at night to get better light.

‘The problem was not the object, but what you leave out.’

A white-coated scientist examines a row of circular fluorescent tubes. A red-headscarfed woman carefully prepares a warp while her colleague attends to ranks of pristine nylon bobbins. Two fettlers remove the rough edges from crankshafts while a pair of welders labour inside a giant boiler. A flat capped shipbuilder buffs a shimmering propeller destined for a luxury liner and a man cutting steel wire is engulfed in sparks. A worker is framed by a gigantic circular bearing and another is dwarfed by a massive paper mill. Men are reduced to mysterious shadows in the infernal blast furnace. A menacing figure in a mask stares at us through round protective goggles. 

‘My job was really to crystallise things that were happening in industry and make drama out of industry. I must confess I used industry like a stage – staged lighting, lots of light, very dramatic - and it produced pictures that made the industry stand out – literally stand out from the mundane pictures that you generally get without lighting.’

Fettler, 1953, Maurice (photographer)

Broomfield’s clients represented a cross section of British industry in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Crosse and Blackwell in Bermondsey, Raleigh in Nottingham, Qualcast in Derby, Royal Doulton in Tamworth, Ford’s in Dagenham, Bowater Paper in Northfleet, British Nylon Spinners in Pontypool, Bull’s Metal and Marine Shipyard in Glasgow.

There is of course a melancholy to this roll call. Since Broomfield retired in the late’70s, most of the factories that he exalted have been diminished or destroyed. Many of the businesses and trades have disappeared. Whole communities have been laid low by recession and redundancy, globalisation and Government.

‘It is not only the beauty that is encapsulated by the camera, but a moment of industrial history now no longer to be seen.’

Preparing a Warp from Nylon Yarn, British Nylon Spinners, digital C-type print, by Maurice Broomfield, 1964, printed 2007, Pontypool, Wales. Museum no. E.3730-2007. © Estate of Maurice Broomfield

A few years ago Broomfield’s son Nick made a moving documentary about his father’s work and their changing relationship: ‘My Father and Me’ (2019). It celebrates Maurice’s achievements and relates how his son subsequently pioneered a style of documentary making that was spontaneous, confrontational and wilfully chaotic - very much at odds with Maurice’s formal, precise approach. While Maurice sought to romanticise industry, Nick sought to reveal its dark secrets. Where Maurice saw expertise, pride, social clubs and fellowship, Nick saw exploitation, poor working conditions and cohorts of young people raised as ‘factory fodder.’ 

This fundamental disagreement became a barrier between them. But after a time father and son learned to respect each other’s work. In the film Maurice explains his position.

‘There’s always two sides to many things. But I felt in fairness to the employees I had not to downgrade it, but to upgrade it.’

Of course, nowadays we may share Nick’s concerns about the indignities of factory life and the environmental damage caused by certain industries. Nonetheless I left the exhibition mourning the UK’s loss of its manufacturing heritage, and with it generations of craftsmanship and countless jobs; grieving for corroded communities; reflecting on the dignity of labour.

‘In that period of time I found that there was a lot of fun, a lot of happiness and pride in their work.’

Maurice Broomfield should perhaps give all of us employed in commercial creativity pause for thought. 

Could we do more to celebrate the work and workers that make our brands? Should we sometimes find a stage for the process and turn the spotlight on the technology itself? Should we see our role as ‘not to downgrade industry, but to upgrade it.’

In 2010 Maurice Broomfield passed away. He was 94. His archive was donated to the V&A Museum. He had been a meticulous craftsman, a chronicler of the industrial age, a persistent voice for humanity and optimism.

‘Whatever we have on this earth we never own it. We are temporary keepers. Everything is on a kind of leasehold really.’

'Five miles out of London on the Western Avenue,
Must have been a wonder when it was brand new.
Talking about the splendour of the Hoover factory,
I know that you’d agree if you had seen it too.
It`s not a matter of life or death,
But what is, what is?
It doesn't matter if I take another breath.
Who cares? Who cares?’

Elvis Costello, 'Hoover Factory’ 

No. 357

Lubaina Himid: ‘How Do You Spell Change?’

Lubaina Himid

'It is possible to change something about yourself, or about your surroundings, or about the world.'
Lubaina Himid

I recently attended a retrospective of the artist Lubaina Himid. (Tate Modern, London until 3 July.)

Himid’s work encompasses embroidered banners, walk-through experiences, soundscapes and stage tableaux. There are vibrant pictures of abstract patterns, imagined buildings and intriguing people; coloured wooden wagons painted with beetles, spiders and jellyfish, an exploration of the emotional resonances of the colour blue and an installation of overturned jelly moulds. Her art denies all boundaries and invites our participation. It explores the imprint of the past on our lives and the opportunity to reclaim our identities and embrace change. 

‘The beginning of my life was a terrible tragedy.’

Himid was born in Zanzibar in 1954. Her father died of malaria when she was just four months old and she moved to London with her textile designer mother. In the mid 1970s she took a course in Theatre Design at the Wimbledon College of Art.

‘[The theatre] seemed like it was somewhere you can make things happen, where things change, costumes change, sets change, locations change, emotions change.’

Himid went on to study Cultural History at the Royal College of Art, and through the 1980s she organized several exhibitions within the UK's Black Art movement.

Lubaina Himid, A Fashionable Marriage

‘I absolutely knew from an early age that African people, Black people, made art, but everywhere around was telling me that we didn’t.’

A darkness looms over much of Himid’s work – shadows of colonialism, echoes of historic injustice. ‘A Fashionable Marriage’ reveals a contemporary world beset by the ghosts of racism. The ‘Le Rodeur’ series takes its name from a notorious French slaving ship. ‘Men in Drawers’ features portraits hidden inside furniture - ‘memories of people whose names no one had bothered to write down.’ Sometimes her art considers migration: exile and escape, safety and danger. The sea seems ever-present, at once serene and sinister.

‘The past, the present and the future overlap and speak together or are in the room at the same time.’

Despite these melancholy themes, Himid’s work does not present us with victims or demand our pity. Rather it is vibrant and colourful, haunting and enigmatic. 

Man in a Paper Drawer, 2017, Lunaina Himid

Elegant young men in sharp fashions meet and chat and do business. Small, subtle gestures catch the eye - ‘private moments in public places.’ 

‘I’m much more interested in how people are; people, that is, who don’t often get painted. The men who have market stalls, or the men playing dominoes, or the man who has just cooked while the others are eating. There’s drama in the everyday, in the small-seeming moments.’

Himid often paints women talking in purposeful groups, developing strategies, planning, negotiating, making decisions: ‘working out our complicated futures together.’

She seems to be suggesting that, though our lives are haunted by the past, we all have agency: the power to reclaim our identity, to rewrite our destiny.

And so, when she presents us with bold depictions of cogs, nails and tools accompanied by the language of instruction manuals, she could be urging us to take matters into our own hands, to get up and get to work on tomorrow.

‘Provide adequate protection.’ 

‘Allow for short breaks.’

‘Work from underneath.’ 

‘Ensure sufficient space.’

This theme of exhortation is taken up at various points in the exhibition when the artist asks us some pointed questions:

‘We live in clothes, we live in buildings. Do they fit us?’

‘What are monuments for?’

‘How much power can I have and what will I do with it?’

‘Where shall we go together?’

Lubaina Himid. © Edmund Blok

Since the age of 36 Himid has lived in Preston. She is a professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire, and, appropriately, her studio is located above the Citizens Advice Bureau in the city centre. 

Himid’s art is involving, provocative, inspiring. It encourages us to re-evaluate our own situation, to recalibrate what is possible. We may feel frustrated with the cards that life and career have dealt us. In her own quiet voice Himid reminds us that we can still learn. And we can change.

‘The work is not meant to comfort you or me, but it might sometimes remind us about what we already know, what might be useful to have remembered about the last crisis in order to avoid too much devastation in the midst of the next.’

Lubaina Himid: Metal Handkerchief - Hinge/Hook

'It's been too hard living,
But I'm afraid to die.
'Cause I don't know what's up there
Beyond the sky.
It's been a long,
A long time coming.
But I know a change gonna come,
Oh, yes it will.’

Sam Cooke, 'A Change Is Gonna Come'

No. 356

A Big Order in a Crowded Bar: Creative Thinking in the Twilight Zone

Busy Bar by Norman Cornish

I had a big order: six pints of two bitters, a pint of lager, a Lucozade and a selection of different flavoured crisps. It was really crowded at the bar. People were elbowing their way past each other, waving and shouting for the publican’s attention. 

I made my way up some rickety backstairs to a smaller, more secluded bar that I imagined few people would know about. Sadly, when I arrived, it too was rammed. 

I was going to take ages to get served. My friends would be wondering where I’d got to. And it wouldn’t be too easy carrying that large order down those rickety stairs on a tray. 

I was in a real quandary. What on earth was I to do?

And then I woke up.

'Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.’
Oscar Wilde

I often forget my dreams, but this one stayed with me. I began pondering what it could mean. 

It’s true. Bar presence is a critical life skill, and one in which I’m sorely lacking. Perhaps I have been wrestling with this shortcoming in my subconscious. 

I’ve also read that dreams could be placeholders for other, deeper anxieties. Could my nightmare of the big order in a crowded bar indicate a more profound concern about my competitive competence, the struggle to achieve, the yearning to make a mark?

Then again, dreams are not just expressions of one’s inner cogitations. They can also be creative catalysts, sparks to original thought.

I read recently in The Times (December 14, 2021, 'Wake up your hidden creative powers’) about a study conducted at the Paris Brain Institute into hypnagogia, the transitional state of consciousness between waking and sleeping.

A team of neuroscientists and sleep doctors was keen to investigate a creative thinking technique used by inventors and artists. Practitioners would take a nap holding an object. (Thomas Edison used a metal ball. Salvador Dali clutched a key above a plate.) As they drifted off to sleep, they would drop the object and so wake themselves up at precisely the point before deep sleep. They believed this exercise, by accessing the ‘twilight zone’ between waking and sleeping, would inspire greater leaps of the imagination and more lateral problem solving.

Salvador Dalí demonstrates his creativity technique
Patrice Habans Getty Images

'Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.'
Langston Hughes

The research recorded the brainwaves of more than a hundred people tackling a difficult maths puzzle over a long period of time. In the middle of the study participants were given a 20-minute break in which they relaxed with their eyes closed while holding a bottle. If they drifted off and dropped the bottle, they would be woken up. 

The puzzle had embedded within it a 'hidden rule’ that would enable participants to get to the solution much more quickly. Of those who managed to stay awake the whole time 31 per cent found the shortcut, compared with only 14 per cent of those who fell into a deep sleep during the break. 

However, there was another group - those who drifted into the non-rapid eye movement sleep stage 1, or N1. 83 per cent of this sample found the shortcut. 

The scientists concluded that the N1 respondents performed so well in the test because this semi-lucid, liminal state enabled them to 'freely watch their minds wander, while maintaining their ability to identify creative sparks.'

'Our findings suggest that there is a creative sweet spot within the sleep onset period… We know that the twilight period is a moment in which memories are replayed and new associations are made. This could in turn explain why some people report having explicit breakthroughs during these short sleep episodes.'

I have tried the ‘twilight zone’ creative thinking technique at home. Sadly, each time I’ve woken up in a grumpy mood, with no dream recollection and a concern that I may have smashed a bottle on the living room carpet.

Nonetheless, I’m sure we should regard dream states as useful provocations to the more linear processes and patterns of everyday thought, as rich seams of ideas and insight.

'Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.'
Edgar Allan Poe

And so I’m prompted to reflect back on my nightmare of the big order in a crowded bar. Could I perhaps derive some creative inspiration from six pints of two bitters, a pint of lager, a Lucozade and a selection of different flavoured crisps?

Erm, I’m not sure. But at least it suggested this article.

'It was a cold day outside today,
I had nothing to do,
So I thought about you.
And then my friend said, "Lets go for a walk,"
Just to clear the air,
Well I thought about you.

The clock keeps ticking,
Cars keeps passing,
And the day goes by, slowly by.
I've nothing to do, but to think about you,
Think about you.’

The Scars, ‘All About You’ (D Child / P Stanley / A Carlsson / A Carlsson)

No. 355

Durer’s Travels: The Advantage of a Curious Mind

Albrecht Dürer, Head of a Woman, a drawing 1520/1520

‘Human curiosity can be so sated by an excess of all worldly things that it becomes weary of them, with the sole exception of knowing a great deal, of which no one tires.’
Albrecht Durer

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of the German artist Albrecht Durer. (‘Durer’s Journeys’ is at the National Gallery, London until 27 February.)

At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries Durer painted deeply felt religious paintings and stunning portraits and self-portraits. He also created a vast number of drawings, engravings and woodcuts - most famously his exploration of mythical subjects set in precisely observed depictions of the natural world.

The winged angel Melencolia sits with her head in one hand awaiting inspiration. Saint Jerome works away in his study, a dog and lion slumbering side-by-side on the floor in front of him. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse trample all before them. A Knight rides alongside Death and the Devil, resigned to his fate. 

'An artist of understanding and experience can show more of his great power and art in small things roughly and rudely done, than many another in a great work.’

One can’t help but be struck by Durer’s acute eye for detail: the bark of a tree, the foliage on a branch and the rocks in a ravine; the tension in a muscle, the curls in long hair and the folds in a fabric are all rendered with meticulous care and attention.

'Sight is the noblest sense of man.'

Clearly Durer’s prodigious natural talent was fuelled by a curious mind, a passion for understanding, an appetite for travel. 

'Art is embedded in nature and they who can extract it, have it.’

Albrecht Dürer, 'The Knight, Death and the Devil', © The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

Durer was born in 1471, the son of a Hungarian goldsmith who had settled in Nuremberg. He learned his father’s trade and was apprenticed to one of the town’s leading painters. From 1490 to 1494, as was the custom at that time, he embarked on a Wanderjahre - in effect, gap years – in order to acquire skills from artists in other regions. His trip took him along the Rhine to Strasbourg, Colmar and Basel.  

'Love and delight are better teachers than compulsion.’

On his return to Nuremberg, aged 23, Durer got married. But he must have been bitten by the travel bug. That same year he set off on the first of two major trips over the Alps to Italy (1494-5, 1505-7). In Venice he met the elderly Giovanni Bellini and learned to be more confident in his use of colour. From Jacopo de' Barbari he discovered the new developments in perspective, anatomy and proportion. 

In 1520-1 the intrepid Durer journeyed to the Low Countries, visiting Antwerp and Aachen, Mechelen and Bruges. In Ghent he admired van Eyck's altarpiece. In Brussels he marvelled at Aztec gold and the animals in the zoo. He met up with royalty, artists and intellectuals. He collected prints and Lutheran pamphlets. He sailed for six days to see a beached whale in Zeeland and was almost killed in a storm.

A 1521 drawing by Dürer of Livonian women in winter dress

‘I was amazed at the subtle ingeniousness of people in foreign lands.’

In the course of his travels Durer kept journals containing numerous drawings in silverpoint, chalk and charcoal. He sketched nobles and nuns, soldiers and servants, dogs and wildlife. He made a note of local landscapes, contemporary fashions and architectural details.

There is a lesson for us all here. At whatever stage we are in life or career, we must find food for thought, catalysts for ideas. We need to look, discover, observe and understand in order to stay fresh. We must continue to learn.

'As I grew older, I realized that it was much better to insist on the genuine forms of nature, for simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.’

Durer died back home in Nuremberg in 1528. He was just 56 years old, but he had led a full and active life. Perhaps he appreciated that the better he understood the world around him, the better he understood himself.

'Some think that they know everybody, but they really don't know themselves.'

'Travel round,
I travel round.
Decadence and pleasure towns,
Tragedies, luxuries, statues, parks and galleries.
Travel round,
I travel round.
Decadence and pleasure towns.’

Simple Minds, ‘I Travel’ (D Forbes / C Burchill / M Macneil / B Mcgee / J Kerr)

No. 354

‘That’s Why I Had That Pen’: The Trials and Triumphs of Mary J Blige

‘I didn’t think that stuff like that could happen to somebody like me – you know what I’m saying? - like us.’
Mary J Blige

I recently watched a moving documentary about Mary J Blige. The film, ‘Mary J Blige’s My Life’ (2021), directed by Vanessa Roth, marked the 25th anniversary of the singer’s second album.

‘The whole ‘My Life’ album was: ‘Please. Love me. Don’t go. I need you.’ It was a cry for help.’

In the mid ‘90s Blige redefined contemporary R&B by integrating her raw soulful vocals with hard-edged hip-hop beats. She sang with deep emotional power, but her voice also had an element of grit that suggested a life fully lived. Her message was honest and urgent, heartfelt and true. She was, and still is, the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul. And 1994’s ‘My Life’ represented a pivotal career moment.

‘I was writing to get free, so I can move around and I wasn’t in so much bondage and I won’t be stuck.’

Blige teaches us to break through the limits that environment sets on our ambition, and to find consolation and healing in creative expression.

1. ‘You Can’t Love Anybody If You Don’t Love Yourself’

'How can I love somebody else
If I can't love myself enough to know
When it's time,
Time to let go?’
‘Be Happy’ (M J Blige/ A DelValle/ S Combs/ J-C Olivier/ C Mayfield)

Blige was born in the Bronx, New York in 1971. Her mother, a nurse, separated from her jazz musician father, and settled the family in the Schlobohm Housing Projects in Yonkers. Money was tight and this was a tough environment for a girl to grow up in.

‘In that neighbourhood someone would get jealous or mad at you for having something – for having a smile, for having a dream…It’s like a prison inside a prison inside a prison. It’s like hurting people hurting each other.’

Bullied at high school, Blige dropped out and turned to alcohol and drugs to numb the pain.

‘Most of the times I was just depressed and didn’t want to live because I didn’t love myself.’

2. Find an Escape

From an early age Blige had found solace in music. She would watch her mother dance round the apartment to the Staple Singers, Gladys Knight and Aretha Franklin. And she developed a particular affinity for Roy Ayers’ ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine.’

‘That record made me feel like I could have something. I couldn’t get my hands on it, but I could have something. ‘My life in the sunshine’ was something I wanted.’

Blige discovered she had a strong voice and musical talent. She sang in private and public, outside and in.

‘Singing was the escape for me. Singing made me forget that we were struggling so much. Singing made me feel free.’

But Blige was consistently held back by her environment. She was living in a world of levelled aspirations.

‘When I was growing up, in the neighbourhood we lived in, it was like: ‘You better not dream it. You better not hope it.’’

3. Take a Chance

In 1988, while visiting the Galleria Mall in White Plains, Blige stopped off at a studio booth and recorded a cover of Anita Baker's ‘Caught Up in the Rapture.’ Through a friend of her mother, the cassette was played to Jeff Redd, a recording artist at Uptown Records.

‘When I heard the demo at the time, I heard the pain of a generation.’
Jeff Redd

The following year Andre Harrell, CEO at Uptown, signed Blige to his label and she set to work with producer Puff Daddy on her first album, ‘What's the 411?’ The record introduced a new chapter in R&B.

‘There wasn’t a lot of R&B singers singing over hip-hop tracks. So that alone right there was: ’OK. We can groove to this. We can do our dances off of this. This doesn’t sound like Mama’s music. But she’s singing, so Mama might like it too.’’
Method Man

Kevin Westenberg - Mary J Blige (2004)

4. ‘Only Connect’

Blige cut a dash in big earrings, boots, baseball shirt and reversed cap. People could relate to her authentic look, but also to her authentic feelings. She developed a remarkable intimacy with her listeners - with people that recognised real emotion. In the documentary a fan articulates the bond between them.

‘I feel like I know her personally. I connect with her through her music. And I just want to hug her.’

Sadly, despite her accomplishments and growing popularity, Blige still didn’t believe in herself.

‘Success comes when you are successful inside. For a long time I didn’t know I was successful outside, because I was a wreck inside.’

Blige was dating Jodeci singer Cedric ‘K-Ci’ Hailey, but their relationship was marked by alcohol and abuse. During a 1995 interview on ‘The Word’, Hailey denied that the couple were planning to get married. When subsequently shown the clip in a TV interview, Blige was visibly upset.

‘Whatever. Let’s move on please. I’m disgusted.’

Blige tumbled into an abyss of depression.

‘I was falling completely off the planet… You’re screaming and there’s nothing coming out.’

5. Channel Your Emotions into Your Work

It was at this point that Blige channelled her indignation and sorrow into her music.

‘That’s why I had that pen. And that’s why I had it all inside and I was able to sing it and write it. It was the only way to survive. It was the only way to get through what I was getting through.’

Built on a foundation of robust beats and sophisticated samples, ‘My Life’ was deeply soulful and gloriously tuneful. Introspective and personal, it spoke of yearning and anger; frailty and strength; joy and pain. Released in 1994, it topped the R&B/Hip-Hop chart for eight weeks and subsequently went triple platinum.

'Sleep don't come easy,
Boy please believe me.
Since you’ve been gone
Everything's going wrong.
Why'd you have to say goodbye?
Look what you've done to me.
I can't stop these tears from falling from my eyes.
Ooh baby,
I'm going down.'
‘I’m Going Down’ (N Whitfield)

What can we in the creative professions learn from the trials and triumphs of Mary J Blige?

‘I wrote it because I needed to write it.’

First we need to be alert to the levelled aspirations that can be found in deprived communities and disadvantaged environments. If people don’t even hope to realise their ambitions, their potential will go unrealised.

Secondly, whilst we endeavour to direct our talents to commercial ends, we should never forget that creativity can provide emotional release and psychological relief. Creativity soothes the soul.

‘No matter how bad it hurts dealing with the truth, whatever the truth is, that’s how you get to the core. You’ve got to feel it to heal.’

Blige went on to create many more fine albums. Her path through life has not been smooth. But she has been sustained by her ability to translate her pain and vulnerability into words and music; to articulate her suffering in song.

‘Being human is hard. But I think I’ve evolved in a major way. What’s consistent is my heart. And my heart is that little girl in Yonkers. My heart is that teenager trying to get through and making it through. My heart is never forgetting the environment I grew up in and going back and helping others. So the evolution is not being afraid to expose my truth and myself, to touch someone else’s life.’

'Ooh baby, not tonight
I don't want to fuss and fight.
I just want to make it right.’
'Mary Jane (All Night Long)' (M J Blige/ S Combs/ C Thompson/ R James)

[If you’d like to read about the issue of levelled aspirations, I’d recommend the 1987 social science classic ‘Ain’t No Making It’ by my friend Jay MacLeod.]

No. 353

A Brief for Planners: Outsiders Who Want to Belong

Richard Hamilton, 'Swingeing London 67 (f)’. 1968–9

‘Oi, Boris!

I kept my head down and quickened the pace.

‘Oi, Boris!’ the stranger shouted after me again. It was a young lad with a group of his mates, all laughing heartily.

‘Boris, get back to work!’

I pretended not to hear and hurried down the street. I crossed the road and blended in with the commuter crowds, losing myself in a fog of self-doubt.

I get this once a week.

‘Alright, Boris?’

‘Hey Boris, are you off to a party?’

Why Boris? I ask myself. Why not Clooney or Beckham or Pitt?

I’ve looked in the mirror many times, assessing my resemblance to the UK Prime Minister. Yes, I have messy hair - but it’s grey, not blond. Yes, I have a heavy frame - but surely not that robust. And there the likeness ends. I have stubble and big ears and wear artisanal jackets… 

I have concluded that it’s more a reflection of Boris’ celebrity than of our similarity. A few years ago I spotted Jeremy Corbyn on every street corner. He was often hanging around in shopping centres or waiting at the bus stop, carrying a plastic bag and looking a bit bored and angry. Now I don’t notice him at all.

'Why fit in when you were born to stand out?’
Dr Seuss

When I was at school I always wanted to belong. I tried to engage and participate - to be in with in-crowd. I aspired to be every Tom, Dick or Harry, every average Joe. Anyone in fact but Jim. I imagined that if one were anonymous, unremarkable, invisible, it would be incredibly liberating.

And yet at the same time I consistently felt a little different – just slightly adjacent, eccentric and offbeat. I laughed at the wrong time, wore the wrong clothes, said the wrong thing. I was one step removed.

'Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.'
John F Kennedy

This I suspect is the curse of all Planners. They tend to be outsiders: people who regard the world from a distance, with a critical eye and a sense of objectivity. And yet at the same time they yearn to fit in. They strive to understand and imagine what others might be thinking or feeling. They want to be normal.

I have come to believe that it is this combination of empathy and objectivity that qualifies Planners to do their job. At their best they feel what others feel and see what others fail to see. They are outsiders who want to belong.

'Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.'
Bernard M Baruch

When I was a kid my mother gave me a crew cut - like a US Marine. And when I was a student I had my hair slicked back with coconut oil - like a Kray twin. Neither of these looks was particularly mainstream, but I’ve considered reverting to them in an effort to break the association with the Prime Minister. Indeed my barber Simon has recently offered to ‘de-Boris’ me.

Of course, I’ll probably still end up looking a bit weird. But where’s the shame in that?

'It's weird not to be weird.'
John Lennon

'Strange, I've seen that face before,
Seen him hanging 'round my door.
Like a hawk stealing for the prey,
Like the night waiting for the day.
Strange, he shadows me back home,
Footsteps echo on the stones.
Rainy nights, on Haussmann Boulevard,
Parisian music drifting from the bars.’

Grace Jones, ‘I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)’(B Reynolds / A Piazzolla / D Wilkey / N Delon)

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year and a thoughtful 2022.
Look after yourselves. 

No. 352