The Sentimental Wedding Gift: ‘Listening Is Not the Same as Waiting to Speak’

Douglas Volk ‘After the Reception’ 1887
Museum: Minneapolis Institute of Art

‘Actually Jane, you could give me a bit of advice. I’m going to my first wedding as an adult really. And I was wondering what to buy as a gift. How do I go about it?’

I looked over my shoulder and saw a neatly dressed young man in his early twenties quizzing a slightly older woman. They were sat together on the 19 bus a few rows behind me.

‘Well, it’s quite straightforward really, Josh. You just have to imagine the lives of the couple getting married – what they do and like and need and so on – and then you think of something that would be really useful to them.’

‘Right. OK. That’s good. Thanks… I do have an idea, Jane. Do you mind if I try it out on you?’

Jane gave Josh an attentive smile as he explained his proposal.

‘The thing is, the bride – Emily - and I were at school together. We were really close friends. Actually we went out with each other for a while. And then I went to Uni before her and we lost touch for a bit. But then she came to the same Uni as me. And every week we used to visit each other. She’d come to mine or I’d go to hers. And one time she gave me this lovely red bobble scarf. And I used to wear it all around town and whenever we met. It was our thing, I guess.’

I’m not too sure what a bobble scarf is. I imagine decorative woollen balls are involved in the manner of a bobble hat… Thankfully the number 19 was crawling along at a slow pace and I could learn more.

‘Anyway, I was thinking that I could buy Emily a lovely new red bobble scarf, and every time she wears it, it’ll remind her of me and us and then. Don’t you think that would make a really nice wedding gift, Jane?’

Jane gave Josh a cautionary look.

‘I think the wedding gift should be about the couple, Josh. Not just about the bride.’

‘Right, OK’, said Josh, a little crestfallen. He would have to give this a little more thought.

I was quite taken with Josh and Jane’s conversation. 

I imagine that Josh had been somewhat smitten with Emily. He could neither envisage her new life without him, nor hear Jane’s advice about appropriate wedding gifts. He was stuck in his own world of melancholy memory.

'Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking.'
Bernard Baruch (American financier and statesman)

We talk about listening and empathy a lot nowadays. It’s a truism to say that these are critical contemporary life skills, essential means of navigating a world of complex interactions and nuanced relationships. But how often do we actually listen to each other?  And how often do we properly endeavour to understand and share the feelings of others? Most of us, most of the time, regard the world through the prism of our own experiences and interests. Despite our best intentions, we are trapped.

Listening and empathy require us to set aside our own goals and perspectives. They demand effort, attention and imagination. They are skills to be nurtured and nourished. But ultimately they deliver untold rewards.

'Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other’s good, and melt at other’s woe.’ 
Homer, ’The Odyssey’ (XVIII)

After reflecting in silence for a short while, Josh looked up enthusiastically.

‘I know, I’ve got it! I can buy them both a red bobble scarf!’

'Why can't you be
The way I want you to be?
Why can't you see you've got to change
To love me?
It'll never happen again.
It'll never happen again.'
Lady Blackbird, 'It'll Never Happen Again’ (T Hardin)

No. 401

Painters Painting: A Treasure Trove of Creative Approaches and Techniques from the New York School of Artists

I recently watched 'Painters Painting', a 1972 documentary by Emile De Antonio about the New York School of artists working in the city after 1940.

There is no narration, and the film doesn’t actually feature any painters painting. Rather it is comprised of the leading artists of the day (and a handful of dealers, collectors and critics) talking about their work. 

We meet Willem de Kooning with thick-rimmed spectacles, zip up jacket and Dutch accent. There’s Barnett Newman in a bow tie, somewhat breathless. Here’s Frank Stella sitting on the floor in his sneakers, and Robert Rauschenberg on top of a stepladder, addressing us in a soft Texan drawl. Helen Frankenthaler wears a smart cream skirt-suit and sits by the radiator. Jasper Johns prefers a round table, a drink and a cigarette. Andy Warhol positions himself opposite a large mirror and offers evasion and aphorism.

‘Everybody’s influenced by everybody.’

Abstract Expressionism was the first specifically American art movement, and it put New York at the center of the Western art world. After it came Pop Art and Color Field painting, and more besides. The documentary provides a fascinating insight into how some revolutionary creative minds worked, and a real treasure trove of innovative approaches and techniques.

Let’s consider some of the lessons to be learned.

1. Follow the Light

Willem De Kooning grew up in Rotterdam, but in 1926, at the age of 22, he travelled to the United States as a stowaway. He explains how the New World appealed to artists in contrast to the tradition-bound life he left behind.

‘I felt a certain depression over there. I felt caught… The American movies always being the paramount movies, it seemed to be a very light place… They seemed to be very light and bright and happy. I always felt I would come to America, even when I was a boy.’

Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, 1952, oil and charcoal on unsized, unprimed canvas, 219.4 x 297.8 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington.

2. Take a Revolutionary Position

The painters that gathered in New York around this time reacted against the conservative art establishment in Europe. Barnett Newman explains.

‘There was no question that my work… took a revolutionary position you might say, against the bourgeois notion of what a painting is as an object – aside from what it is as a statement. Because in the end you can’t even contain it in the ordinary bourgeois home.’

In time Abstract Expressionism, with its bold, spontaneous articulation of an individual’s feelings, became the dominant movement. Painters began to measure themselves against its leading lights, rather than against artistic tradition. 

‘Both Pollack and Hofmann established American painting as a real thing for me. I didn’t have to go all the way back and worry again about where I stood in relation to Matisse and Picasso. I could worry about where I stood in relation to Hofmann and Pollack.’
Barnett Newman

3. Think Big 

The New York School was often characterised by the scale of its paintings. 

‘The scale of America is different. Most American painters work in what were once small factories, whereas most European artists work in either apartments or studios that were designed in terms of easel painting. There’s no doubt too that there’s a different experience in a large picture. But I think it was more to do with a heroic impulse as compared with the intimacy of French painting.’
Robert Motherwell

As the focus shifted from the easel to the mural, paint was applied, not by carefully controlled brush strokes and tiny movements of the wrist; but rather by big expansive gestures of the arm.

‘I did not want a small gesture, standing at the easel with a sable brush. And having looked at cubism, which can be very detailed and minute and fine and have that essence of the easel and the sable brush, I literally wanted to break free, put it on the floor, throw the paint around.’
Helen Frankenthaler

Barnett Newman Vir Heroicus Sublimis 1950-51

4. Celebrate the Process

With such a radically different approach to creating work, there was a good deal of thought given to the process itself. 

‘I was more interested in the making aspect of Abstract Expressionism than I was in the subject matter. And I mean by that the fact that the artists were handling the materials in a physical way, the fact that they were making paintings.’
Kenneth Noland

Robert Rauschenberg, whose much celebrated Combines incorporated found everyday objects, became fascinated by the properties of his discoveries.

‘You begin with the possibilities of the material and then you let them do what they can do. So the artist is really a bystander while he’s working.’

5. Find a Subject

Inevitably the film is filled with argument and counter-argument. Helen Frankenthaler, the painter of fluid, organic and colourful abstracts, was not interested in displaying her process.

‘A picture that is beautiful, or comes off, or works, looks as if it all was made in one stroke, at once. I myself don’t like to see the trail of a brush stroke, the drip of paint. To me that’s part of a sentiment, or clueing in, that has nothing to do with how a picture hits you.’

Similarly Newman contends that the subject is more important than the process. 

‘I felt the issue in those years was: ‘What can a painter do?’ And the problem of the subject became very clear to me as the crucial thing in painting. Not the plasticity, not the look, not the surface, none of these things meant that much. The issue for me – and I think it existed for all the fellows, for Pollack and for Gottlieb: What we gonna paint?’

Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959

6. Seek the Universal

So what should that subject be?

For Newman it had to be universal. His paintings appear to be purely abstract, but he gave them titles that hint at big spiritual themes: life and death, and a world living in the shadow of the Holocaust. 

‘I hope that my work can be seen and understood on a universal basis - that is that the language is of nature, that it doesn’t have the necessity of its American labels.’

7. Look Somewhere Else

For Rauschenberg the key to finding a subject is raising your eyes from the narrow confines of art and examining the world around you.

‘I wasn’t interested in attaining a precious state of isolation. I was interested in what was around me. Art doesn’t come out of art, and you don’t work with one foot in the art book, and no painter has ever really been able to help another. I had no interest in being better or worse than any other artist… My paintings are invitations to look somewhere else.’

Rosy-Fingered Dawn at Louse Point, 1963
oil on canvas, Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

8. Decide What You Refuse to Do

Robert Motherwell, one of the youngest of the New York School, was noted for his black forms on white backgrounds and for his literary and political themes. He suggests that the first step in creation is determining what you’re rejecting or refusing to do.

‘In some ways it’s easier to say what I’m doing by saying what I’m refusing to do. If I look at one of the Open series now, I see that I refused to have it glossy rather than matt; there are no shadows; there’s very little representation; the space is ambivalent in that the line is clearly drawn on a flat surface.’

9. Make Immediate Impact

Newman’s paintings often featured thin vertical lines, or ‘zips’ as he called them - flashes of light at once uniting and dividing the image. He encourages us to work spontaneously and instinctively, to disregard detail.

‘Your first reaction when you meet a person for the first time is immediate. And it’s a total reaction in which the entire personality of a person and your own personality make contact. And to my mind that’s almost a metaphysical event. If you have to start examining the eyelashes and all that sort of thing, it becomes a cosmetic situation in which you remove yourself from the experience.’

Kenneth Noland, who painted circles, chevrons and stripes in bright, bold colours, often described himself as ‘a one-shot painter.’ He rejected preparatory drawing and sketching as part of the redundant Western tradition.

‘If you were in touch with what you were doing, you only had to do it one time.’

Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55
(dated on reverse 1954)

10. Push and Pull at Reality

Frankenthaler reflects on the liberating power of art to transform reality.

‘For me learning cubism was the greatest freedom.’

She strikes the white wall at her side as she speaks.

‘That’s flat, but I can make it – if I do it right - play around. So that, because of a color and a shape, things go back miles and come forward yards. Hoffman called this ‘push and pull’.’

11. Act on Your Dreams

In 1954, frustrated with the grand individual expression at the heart of Abstract Expressionism, Jasper Johns burned all his previous work and started introducing symbols, text and numbers into his paintings - so integrating the impersonal with the personal, the representational with the abstract. 

Johns’ new period began with ‘Flag,’ which was prompted by a dream.

‘One night I dreamed I painted a large American flag. And the next morning I got up and I went out and I bought the materials to begin it.’

12. Mean What You Do (and Don’t Mean What Others Do)

Johns makes a compelling case for artistic individuality and integrity.

‘The idea did come to me that I should have to mean what I did. Then accompanying that was that there was no reason to mean what other people do. And so if I could tell that I was doing what someone else was doing, then I would try not to do it.’

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 108
1965-67

13. Go That Further Step

Over time Abstract Expressionism became the new establishment, and a new generation rebelled against it. Frank Stella complained that its big expansive gestures ‘got lost on the corners.’ Regarding the picture as an object in its own right, rather than as a representation of something, he painted flat cool colourful geometric patterns.

‘[Abstract Expressionism] got to be more of an illustration of energy than an establishment of real pictorial energy. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be able to have some of the virtues of Abstract Expressionism, but still have them under a kind of control. But not control for its own sake, a kind of conceptual painterly control that I thought would make even stronger pictures.’ 

The New York School continued to evolve. Jules Olitski spray-painted large canvases to create dematerialised fields of colour. His process involved taking an idea beyond its natural conclusion.

‘It’s also the taking the chance to play and to wreck, to destroy. I find it very exciting and irresistible to try to go that further step and see what will happen. You get the thought in your head: ‘If over this I put this, or I change this in that way’, spray some more varnish on it, spray a whole pool of glop over it, or over part of it, or any number of things that you can do. What will happen? What will it look like?’

14. Find Human Scale

Finally we return to Newman and the issue of the size of a painting. He suggests that really it’s the scale of the idea that matters.

‘In the end size doesn’t count. Whether the easel painting is small or big is not the issue. Size doesn’t count. It’s scale that counts. And the only way you can achieve human scale is by the content.’

So. A free flowing collection of insights and observations about the creative process. Free flowing, because that’s the way the film is structured, and because that was the spirit of the New York School.

I hope nonetheless that you find something encouraging in here as you embark on 2023.

Happy New Year!

'Everyone has a destiny, so do I.
I got no time to waste.
I'm the star in my life, you see.
Yes, it's me and only meant for me.
Gonna get myself together, enjoy my life forever.
Not thinking of you, because you made me blue.
Shame on you, because my love was true, it was true.
Gonna get, gonna get over you, over you.
Tomorrow I know I'll get over you.’

France Joli, 'Gonna Get Over You’ (W E Anderson)

No. 400

The Passionate Activism of Käthe Kollwitz: ‘I Was Put In This World To Change It’

 Käthe Kollwitz, Head of a Child in its Mother’s Hands

'I have never been able to carry out any work coolly. On the contrary it is done, so to speak, with my own blood.’
Käthe Kollwitz

I recently attended a fine exhibition of female German artists from the early decades of the twentieth century. (‘Making Modernism’ is at the Royal Academy, London until 12 February.)

I was particularly taken with the work of Käthe Kollwitz, a committed socialist who preferred print to painting because it was a more accessible, democratic medium. Kollwitz presented us with aching images of humanity, frail and fragile, raw and vulnerable. She portrayed struggle, hardship, tragedy and grief. She believed that art could illuminate suffering, and ultimately change the world.

‘I felt that I have no right to withdraw from the responsibility of being an advocate. It is my duty to voice the sufferings of men.’

Käthe Schmidt was born in Königsberg, Prussia in 1867. Her father, a house builder, was a radical Social Democrat and her mother came from a family of strict Lutherans.

‘Middle-class people held no appeal for me at all. Bourgeois life on the whole seemed to me pedantic.'

Educated at the School for Women Artists in Berlin, in 1891 she married Karl Kollwitz, a doctor tending to the poor in that city, and they had two children together. In the family apartment she created etchings, lithographs and drawings of working people and sailors; of destitute weavers and revolutionary peasants.

‘Sorrow isn’t confined to social misery. All my work hides within it life itself, and it is life that I contend through my work.’

Käthe Kollwitz,Woman with Dead Child, 1903.
Etching on paper. 42.4 x 48.6 cm. © Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.

Kollwitz was haunted by mortality: the early passing of her younger brother when she was a child; the near death of her elder son from diphtheria; and then the loss of her younger son in the First World War. She had initially supported his wish to enlist and would forever regret it. Afterwards she became an ardent and outspoken pacifist.

'I have received a commission to make a poster against war. That is a task that makes me happy. Some may say a thousand times that this is not pure art.... But as long as I can work, I want to be effective with my art.’

Kollwitz’s trauma is ever-present in her art. A skeletal figure grasps at a mother from behind, as a desperate infant reaches up to her in vain. Death touches a young boy as he sleeps. A woman cradles her deceased child on her knees, her eyes closed in grief.

‘As an artist I have the right to extract the emotional content out of everything, to let things work upon me and then give them outward form.’

There is a strong sense in Kollwitz’s work of the preciousness of life. She focuses, close-up, on tender gestures, on rare moments of intimacy.

A mother presses her baby to her face. Another holds the head of her sleeping child between gentle hands. Two lovers embrace in desperate passion. A couple nestle against each other in silence. This intimacy extends to Kollwitz’s excursion into sculpture. A woman, head bowed, balances her infant on her shoulder, as if to say: this is all that matters.

'Look at life with the eyes of a child.’

Käthe Kollwitz,Self-portrait, 1889.
Pen, brush and ink on drawing carton. 31.2 x 24.2 cm. © Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.

There is tenderness too in Kollwitz’s self-portraits. At 22 - with short hair, plain clothes and a sturdy hand gripping a lapel - she seems ready to take on the world. At 67 she looks worn out, her brow lined, her lips pursed, her eyes dark with disappointment.

'No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.’

Kollwitz had reason to look depressed in the later image. The previous year, 1933, the Nazi government had forced her to resign from her position as professor at the Prussian Academy of Arts. Her work was removed from museums and she was banned from exhibiting.

'I do not want to die... until I have faithfully made the most of my talent and cultivated the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown.’

Käthe Kollwitz, German, Woodcut, 1929

In 1936 Kollwitz was visited by the Gestapo, and threatened with arrest and deportation to a concentration camp. Protected by her international reputation, she survived. In 1943 her house was bombed, and many drawings and prints were lost. She died in Moritzburg, near Dresden, just 16 days before the end of the war.

'One day, a new ideal will arise, and there will be an end to all wars. I die convinced of this. It will need much hard work, but it will be achieved… The important thing, until that happens, is to hold one's banner high and to struggle… Without struggle there is no life.’

The silent intensity of Kollwitz’s work may seem a million miles away from the world of commercial communication. Ours is a field of big bold statements, grand themes and trivial messages. But perhaps we should recognize the power of human intimacy: the quiet word, the gentle touch, the sensitive gesture. And like Kollwitz we should be fuelled by a willingness to struggle and an appetite for change.

‘I was put in this world to change it.’

Time for a festive break.
Have a restful Christmas. 
Next post will be on Thursday 5 January 2023.
See you on the other side, I hope.

'My dear acquaintance, it's so good to know you,
For strength of your hand
That is loving and giving.
And a happy new year,
With love overflowing,
With joy in our hearts,
For the blessed new year.
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
For us all who are gathered here.
And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, kind, and forgiving.
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer.
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year.’

Regina Spektor. 'My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)’ (P Horner / Peggy Lee)

No. 400

Living in a Lorem Ipsum World: Sometimes We Need to Talk Less and Say More

Bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero

'The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.'
Hans Hofmann

When I first entered advertising, I was quite taken with the employment in typesetting of ‘lorem ipsum’: dummy text that acted as a placeholder in layouts until the proper copy was written.

'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat….’

In developing press ads we would establish the headline, image and art direction first, and leave the precise copy for a later date.

‘Just ‘lorem ipsum’ it for now.’

‘Lorem ipsum’ has been in use in the printing world since the 1500s. Nowadays you’ll see it in web-build and digital publishing. It is often referred to as Latin gibberish. But in fact the standard text derives, albeit in corrupted form, from a treatise on ethics by the ancient Roman lawyer, politician and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero.

‘Lorem ipsum’ starts mid-way through a sentence:

‘Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.’

These lines have been translated as follows:

‘Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.’

This passage suggests that first century BC writers could be as prolix as their twenty-first century equivalents. Cicero should perhaps have limited himself to a simpler sentiment:‘No pain, no gain.’

'Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.’
Louise Brooks

I spent nearly all of my time in advertising at BBH, an agency whose creative output was led by an art director. As a result it had a very particular relationship with words. We liked a precise, provocative headline; an insightful, memorable endline. But we were consistently cautious around long copy. Many’s the time I sat in a script review with co-founder John Hegarty when he would approve the overall idea, but ask for the dialogue to be stripped back, or erased completely.

‘I’m not sure we really need all those words, do we?’

Sometimes nowadays it feels like we live in a ‘lorem ipsum’ world. Everywhere we look - in business meetings and in the media; amongst clients and colleagues, politicians, and journalists - there seems an incredible capacity for producing dummy text. People trot out cliches and platitudes, sound-bites and slogans. They just drone on - without hesitation or deviation, but with a good deal of repetition - until they are interrupted or muted. They’re ‘talking loud and saying nothing.'

'Be sincere, Be brief, Be seated.'
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The ability to speak continuously with confidence is a talent of sorts. But, over the course of my working life, I found that the colleagues who had the most impact on meetings, and whose careers advanced with the greatest velocity, were those who restricted themselves to fewer and better statements; more concise and memorable observations; more thoughtful and provocative ripostes.

Perhaps we should all learn to talk less and say more.

'Don't tell me
How to do my thing,
When you can't, 
Can't do your own.
You're like a dull knife,
Just ain't cutting.
You're just talking loud
And saying nothing.’

James Brown, 'Talkin' Loud and Sayin’ Nothing’ (B Byrd / J Brown)

No. 399

The Mediocre Pioneer: You Don’t Need to Be First, But You Do Need To Be Fast

Still from Lights of New York

‘This is a story of Main Street and Broadway – a story that might have been torn out of last night’s newspaper.’
Opening titles, 'Lights of New York'

Warner Brothers’ 1927 movie 'The Jazz Singer' is celebrated as the first feature-length film with sound. It presents six songs performed by Al Jolson and contains two minutes' worth of synchronized talking. Famously Jolson’s first spoken words are: 

'Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin’ yet.'

However, the rest of the dialogue in 'The Jazz Singer' is conveyed through the caption cards that were standard in the silent era. 

The first truly all-talking feature film is a lesser known work. 

'Lights of New York,' a crime drama directed by Bryan Foy was released by Warner Brothers the year after ‘The Jazz Singer.’ It was originally intended as a low budget, two-reel short. Foy had no experience with features. But while the studio heads were out of the country for the European premiere of ‘The Jazz Singer’, he filled out the plot and shot four reels more than promised. His costs went from the allocated $12,000 to $23,000.

Warners had been planning to make the first all-talkie a prestige picture and they ordered Foy to cut the film back to its originally agreed length. But the money had been spent and, after a couple of positive private screenings, the studio determined to give 'Lights of New York' a nationwide release in its full 57-minute duration.

‘This 9 o’clock town is getting on my nerves.’

A small-town innocent is duped by bootleggers into borrowing money and setting up a barbershop in New York. He soon realises that his business is merely a front for a speakeasy - The Night Hawk, a club ‘where anything can happen and usually does.’ To make matters worse, our hero’s sweetheart, who works as a performer at the club, has caught the eye of its crooked boss. A consignment of liquor is stolen, a cop is murdered, a lover is jilted, the good guy is framed. There is a gripping climax.

‘Lights of New York’ is an entertaining enough yarn and an interesting piece of social history. It immerses us in Prohibition era America and is rich with authentic city slang.

‘You know I’m not a squealer, don’t you? I’ve always been on the up-and-up.’

‘This guys got a streak of yellow a yard wide.’

‘I want you guys to make him disappear. Take him for a ride.’

Despite these charms, the new sound technology imposed considerable constraints on the production. Actors cluster round a microphone strategically placed in the telephone on a desk. They huddle near a lampshade, squat around a hat stand, congregate next to a vase of flowers. It’s all a little awkward.

Most contemporary critics were unimpressed. While The New York Times recognised the film's significance as ‘the alpha of what may develop as the new language of the screen,’ other reviewers were scathing.

‘In a year from now everyone concerned will run for the river before looking at it again.’
Variety
‘It would have been better silent, and much better unseen.’
The New Yorker  

And yet the brickbats did not deter audiences, who were simply thrilled by the novelty of sound. The movie grossed $1.2 million at the box-office and by the end of 1929 Hollywood was exclusively producing sound films. The silent era was over.

What are we to learn from ‘Lights of New York’? It’s not a great movie and it’s rarely watched nowadays. As US golfer Walter Hagen once famously observed: 

‘No one remembers who came in second.’

Nonetheless, the film plays an important part in the history of cinema and it was incredibly profitable in its day. 

Foy demonstrated that in times of change you’ve got to sidestep bureaucracy, recognise that there’s only a brief window of opportunity and seize the day. When an industry is reinventing itself, actions speak louder than words. You don’t need to be first, but you do need to be fast. 

Sometimes timing trumps quality. And sometimes it’s smart to be a mediocre pioneer.

‘You want me to hide all my feelings.
And you want me to stop loving you.
But I’m a woman filled with pride.
I’ve been hurt deep inside.
I find it’s easier to say than do.’

Bettye Lavette, ‘Easier to Say (Than Do)’ (BB Cunningham and G McEwen)

No. 398

Helen Saunders, Forgotten Pioneer: Don’t Let Anyone Paint Over Your Contribution

Helen Saunders (1885-1963), Vorticist composition (Black and Khaki) c 1915 Drawing . The Courtauld, London. © Estate of Helen Saunders.

‘I don’t really paint ‘in order to keep well’, but rather try to keep well ‘in order to paint.’’
Helen Saunders

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of Helen Saunders. (The Courtauld, London, until 29 January 2023)

Saunders was one of the pioneers of abstract art in Britain, a founding member of the radical Vorticist movement. She painted images that celebrated the modern world with vibrant colours, harsh lines and jagged edges. Yet the show is a small affair, as so very little of her work survives. This is a melancholy tale of talent unrecognised and unrewarded.

Saunders was born in Ealing in 1865, the daughter of a solicitor, and she studied at a number of London art schools. Her early work took a post-Impressionist approach – simplifying, abstracting, flattening – rather beautiful depictions of a friend’s face in profile, a mother and child, a solitary tree.

Helen Saunders. Portrait of a woman, c1913. Drawing. The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust). © Estate of Helen Saunders.

Saunders became friends with the artist Wyndham Lewis, who in 1914 established Vorticism, a modernist movement that exalted the dynamism of urban life and the machine age. She signed its manifesto in the first issue of BLAST magazine, deliberately misspelling her surname to avoid embarrassing her conservative family. She contributed two drawings and a poem to the second issue the following year and participated in two Vorticist exhibitions, in London and New York.

Saunders’ work of this period displayed the dynamic geometry, bold lines and bright colours typical of Vorticism. A long-limbed figure is fired from the barrel of a gun. A giant frees himself from his bonds, sending little people scampering in all directions. A nude woman with a mask-like face lies in a hammock, completely distraught. There’s a mysterious figure with an ovoid head, claw fingers and an orange halo. There’s an electric evocation of jazz music. There are energetic abstract designs, fizzing with life. 

During the First World War Saunders worked in the government censor’s office. She also acted as Lewis’ unpaid secretary while he was away on active service - renting out his rooms, typing his manuscripts, mounting drawings that he sent home from the front.

Helen Saunders. Copyright The Estate of Helen Saunders. © Estate of Helen Saunders.

After the war Lewis turned his back on the ‘bleak and empty geometrics ‘of Vorticism. And at the same time he turned his back on Saunders. She was deeply hurt. What’s more, the brutal conflict had dented her own enthusiasm for modernity. And so she decided to move on in her art, adopting a more realist style.

Saunders withdrew from the male dominated creative scene to paint still lifes, landscapes and portraits. Frustrated when galleries rejected her work, she exhibited only sporadically.

‘I am still a solitary by nature... What I fear more than anything else is the monotonous stampede of other people’s thoughts through my mind when my own thoughts are too tired and dissipated to give battle to the invaders.’

Helen Saunders’s Hammock (around 1913-14). The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust); © Estate of Helen Saunders

In 1940 much of Saunders’ work was destroyed when her flat in Holborn was bombed in the Blitz. And in the years that followed her contribution to the birth of abstract art in Britain was gradually marginalised, not least because Lewis claimed all the credit. 

‘Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did, and said, at a certain period.’
Wyndham Lewis in 1956

Perhaps Saunders was also a victim of her own modesty.

‘I feel myself that I have had some of the best luck in the world and some perhaps of the worst! But NO – other people have had far worse misfortunes.’

On New Year’s Day 1963 the 77 year old Saunders died of accidental coal gas poisoning in her top floor flat in Holborn. It had been a very cold night.

If you pop upstairs from the Saunders exhibition, you can see ‘Praxitella’, a 1921 portrait by Wyndham Lewis of his partner of the time, film critic Iris Barry.

Praxitella by Wyndham Lewis,

For some years scholars have suspected that this portrait was painted over another work. It has an uneven texture and traces of red appear through cracks in the surface. It’s not unusual for artists to re-use a canvas - perhaps they are dissatisfied with a previous painting, or they’re just being economical with materials.

When recently Courtauld students Rebecca Chipkin and Helen Kohn applied X-ray technology to ‘Praxitella,’ they found an abstract composition lying underneath. But this was not a Lewis work. Rather it matched a Saunders painting from 1915, ‘Atlantic City.’ This piece had been reproduced in black and white in BLAST, but had long since been thought lost.

The X-ray of Lewis’ Praxitella beside a reproduction of Saunders’ Atlantic City © the Courtauld / Estate of Helen Saunders

The Courtauld has used technology to create a partial colour reconstruction of ‘Atlantic City.’  We are presented with a fragmented modern metropolis, a collision of boardwalks, coastlines and hotel buildings, in bright greens, reds and yellows. It really is quite striking. And also profoundly sad.

Why did Lewis paint over Saunders’ work? He wasn’t short of money at the time. Was it arrogance, jealousy or just plain spite? We can only guess.

We may recognise something of this injustice in the world of commerce. 

In our field credit tends to be apportioned at awards ceremonies, in case studies and in corporate folklore. Heroes are identified, critical moments are located and a narrative is composed. In the course of this process, it’s not unusual for there to be a subtle rewriting of history, a change of emphasis, an adjustment of the cast list. And sometimes success is attributed to an individual ‘genius’, rather than to the broader team.

We may feel that we’re not bothered by this; that there’s no point arguing about the past; that we should keep our eyes on the future. We may wish to keep our own counsel. But it is a responsibility of leadership to ensure that credit is distributed, not to the loudest voices and the sharpest elbows, but according to merit and fact. We should never allow anyone’s contribution to be painted over.

'All I've ever wanted was an honest life,
To be the person that I really am inside.
All I've ever needed was a little time to grow,
A little time to understand all the things that I know,
So I can listen to you lovingly instead of getting up to go.
Some people take a little more time to grow.
Right when you have it all figured out,
Life comes to throw you another doubt.
But my head's up high, and I ain't got nothing but time,
To work at living an honest life.’
Courtney Marie Andrews, 'Honest Life'

No. 397

‘As Simple As Possible, But Not Simpler': What I Learned from My Minimalist Muesli

'Complexity means distracted effort. Simplicity means focused effort.’
Edward de Bono

There was a curious chapter in my childhood when I decided to make my own muesli. 

It was the late 1970s. And I recall associating the cereal with all things healthy, natural and European. Sort of Abba, Heidi and Ski Sunday combined in a breakfast bowl.

I set about enhancing a base of oats with some sultanas and raisins I had located in the larder. And then I added some peanuts I bought from Ken’s the Newsagent. Once bathed in a generous dash of red-top milk, my muesli slipped down extremely well.

And yet, after I’d got through the first batch, it occurred to me that preparing the cereal had been quite a bothersome business. All that mess, measurement and surfaces that needed wiping down. (I confess I’ve always been a little lazy in the kitchen.) I wondered if I could achieve the same level of satisfaction by withdrawing an ingredient or two. And so I made the second batch without sultanas. And the third without peanuts. 

Still my muesli was pretty tasty. I congratulated myself on a job well done. With minimum fuss.

It was only when, a few weeks later, my Mum ran out of dried fruit supplies, that my Minimalist Muesli failed to deliver.

‘You’re just eating cold porridge, Jim,’ she observed one morning as she rushed past me on the way to work.

She was right. Somewhere along the road of reduction my Minimalist Muesli had stopped being muesli at all.

'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’
Albert Einstein

In business we often crave simplicity. It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves why we value it so highly. And why we must take care when pursuing it.

The world seems to be getting ever more convoluted and confused. So many partners and platforms; data and decisions; routes to market and radical futures. This complexity reduces comprehension and retards action. We risk being swamped in information, fatigued by change, paralysed by choice.

'There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable.’
Peter Drucker

The reason we pine for simplicity at work is that it reduces friction and increases efficiency. It makes things easier to understand, execute and communicate. Properly articulated, simplicity unifies and inspires. It gets us marching in the same direction, to the same drumbeat.

'That’s been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.’
Steve Jobs

We should celebrate and reward people who can reduce and distil; condense and concentrate; clarify and crystalise. These are precious skills in an ever more fragmented world. Because simplicity is the great accelerator.

We just need to be mindful that there is a point at which simple turns to simplistic. I guess that’s the point at which my Minimalist Muesli recipe became cold porridge.

'Simple and true,
I just don't know
What I'm gonna do without you.
Simple and plain,
And I just don't know
How I would ever say it any other way.
Simple and true,
I still love you.’

Sara Bareilles, ’Simple and True'

No. 396

Beethoven’s Metronome: Should We Always Seek to Control Our Own Creations?

Beethoven's walk in nature, by Julius Schmid

I recently watched an excellent BBC documentary series relating the life story of Ludwig van Beethoven (‘Being Beethoven’ marked the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth).

I was particularly struck by the tale of Beethoven and the metronome.

In 1814 Dietrich Winkel, a German organ-builder based in Amsterdam, invented a mechanical chronometer. It enabled musicians to stick to a regular tempo when they practised, and promised composers the ability to set a standard tempo for their work.

Winkel’s device came to the attention of Johann Mälzel, a maker of musical automatons whose creations included a Mechanical Turk that played chess. Mälzel had also been experimenting with musical chronometers, but on learning of Winkel’s invention he recognised that he had been outdone. When he tried to buy the device, Winkel refused. So he simply made a copy, added a scale and patented it himself. In 1816 he began manufacturing the gadget as ‘Malzel's Metronome.’

Beethoven had for a while now been concerned about the tempi that his music was played at, particularly because, as his reputation grew, he often wasn’t present to conduct his own work. The first question he asked about a performance was ‘How were the tempi?’

Beethoven was familiar with Mälzel. He had bought several ear trumpets from the inventor and they had collaborated on a couple of musical projects. Indeed there had been a dispute between them over the rights to a particular composition. 

In 1817 Mälzel introduced Beethoven to his metronome, perhaps as a peace offering. The composer was delighted. 

'I have thought for a long time of giving up these nonsensical terms allegro, andante, adagio, presto. And Malzel‘s metronome gives us the best opportunity to do so.’

Beethoven was by then an elderly and eccentric curmudgeon. For some years he had suffered increasing problems with his hearing. His deafness impaired his ability to work and made him feel ever more isolated. He had been unlucky in love, having consistently fallen for women above his class. He had conducted a bitter campaign to gain custody of his deceased brother’s son. He was frustrated that his music, though widely performed, had not earned him the wealth and social status that his genius deserved. And musical tastes were evolving.

For Beethoven the metronome presented the prospect of control. In the documentary conductor and organist Martin Haselbock observes:

‘We might see this also as the attempt of an ageing composer to keep control of things. Control of his music with the device of the metronome, control of his financial situation, because Beethoven couldn’t get any fees any more as a performer, control of his personal life.’

Beethoven enthusiastically embraced the new invention and published metronomic indications for the eight symphonies he had composed to date. He demanded dutiful adherence to his instructions.

‘The metronome marks will follow soon. Do not fail to wait for them. In our century things of this kind are certainly needed… Performers must now obey the ideas of the unfettered genius.’

Early metronomes used at the time of Ludwig van Beethoven incorporate a weighted mechanical pendulum with a scale written underneath. (Courtesy: iStock/Stefan-Rotter)

In the years since Beethoven’s death his tempo markings have become the subject of controversy. They indicate much quicker speeds than those of contemporary custom and taste, and have routinely been ignored. 

Some have argued that tempo indications should guide and inspire rather than dictate; that expressive markings should be taken less seriously than the notes themselves. Some have observed that today’s larger symphony halls and louder instruments demand slower tempi for precise articulation and nuance. Some have proposed that Beethoven’s metronome was just broken.

Anyone working in a creative field will recognise Beethoven’s desire to assert ongoing control over his creative output: the need to minimise interpretation by others; the craving to bypass intermediaries and achieve a direct connection with the audience; the yearning for a voice that speaks beyond your physical presence, beyond your lifespan – a voice that articulates your thoughts and feelings with absolute truth and abiding clarity.

But most creative initiatives can only come to fruition as team endeavours. Most ideas only achieve their potential through collaboration and translation. And perhaps the best guarantee of an enduring reputation is to relinquish control of one’s output to future generations. At some point we must learn to let go.

In his final completed composition Beethoven set the following phrase to music:

‘We all make mistakes, but everyone makes them quite differently.’

At the end of 1826, Beethoven fell ill and took to his bed. As news of his terminal condition spread, friends and admirers visited to say their farewells. The composer asked for a bottle of Rhine wine from a case that had been given to him. At last it arrived. He glanced up.

‘Pity. Too late.’

These were Beethovens’s last words. Legend has it that on 26 March 1827 there was a storm raging outside and suddenly a clap of thunder. The 56-year-old composer sat bolt upright from his coma, shook his fist at the sky and fell back dead. Finally he relinquished control.

'In the spring days of my life
Happiness deserted me!
Truth I dared to utter boldly
And the chains are my reward.
Willingly I bear my tortures,
End my life in ignominy.
To my heart this is sweet solace:
I have always done my duty!’

'Florestan’s Aria', Act Two, ‘Fidelio'

No. 395

'With an Apple I Will Astonish Paris’: Cezanne, Starting Revolutions in Unexpected Places

Paul Cezanne - Still Life with Fruit Dish. Museum of Modern Art in New York

Photograph: www.scalarchives.com

I recently attended a fine exhibition of the work of Paul Cezanne. (Tate Modern, London until 12 March, 2023)

'There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other.’

Cezanne painted intense, almost abstract, landscapes from flat planes of bold colour. He gave us enigmatic portraits that capture the sensation of being in the room with the sitter. He created still lifes that are hypnotically vivid and spatially disorientating. He demonstrated that infinite opportunities can be offered by a narrow range of subjects. He built a bridge between Impressionism and Cubism. And he subverted the traditional hierarchy of art.

'The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.’

Paul Cezanne was born in 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, the son of a milliner and later banker. At the age of 22 he set aside his law studies when his schoolmate Emile Zola encouraged him to join the creative community in Paris.

Cezanne sketched in the capital’s museums and attended classes at the Academie Suisse. The city was a hotbed of social and political unrest. Zola was a republican and Cezanne’s mentor Pissaro was an anarchist. But Cezanne was a shy, introverted fellow, less obviously opinionated.

'The world doesn't understand me and I don't understand the world. That's why I've withdrawn from it.’

Paul Cezanne self-portrait 1875 © RMN-Grand Palais

Cezanne expressed his revolutionary zeal in his art. 

In 1870, in order to avoid conscription in the Franco-Prussian War, Cezanne moved to L’Estaque, a seaside village just west of Marseille. Over a 15 year period he made 40 paintings of the hot dry landscape, endlessly curious for fresh views and perspectives. 

'Here, on the river's verge, I could be busy for months without changing my place, simply leaning a little more to right or left.’

Overlooking an azure sea, the yellow and brown block houses, with their shuttered windows and ochre gable roofs, create jagged, geometric patterns, intersecting with factory chimneys, telegraph poles and the grey viaduct. 

We are witnessing the first steps towards Cubism.

'I believe in the logical development of everything we see and feel through the study of nature.'

Mont Sainte-Victoire, near Aix, featured in over 80 of Cezanne’s works. He painted it from the valley below, from his garden at Jas de Bouffan, from the roof of his studio and from the local quarry. The limestone mountain looms in the distance, a brooding permanent companion, sometimes reduced to just a few blue and white brushstrokes. Whereas the Impressionists had been interested in light, atmosphere and the fleeting moment, Cezanne was fascinated by geology, soil and timeless presence.

'I am a consciousness. The landscape thinks itself through me.'

Paul Cezanne - The Sea at L’Estaque behind Trees

Still life was traditionally considered an unimportant genre. Great painters tended to concern themselves with historical, mythical and religious themes. But for Cezanne everyday objects represented an opportunity for subversion. Rather than precisely depicting an item itself, he would convey his consciousness of it. This was the art of perception.

'People think how a sugar basin has no physiognomy, no soul. But it changes every day.’

Here are oranges, apples and pears; ginger jar, sugar bowl and water jug - arranged against a piece of patterned fabric, l’indienne. Cezanne presents these things in blazing, iridescent colours, in endless permutations. Sometimes his vision seems warped, the bottles, dishes and fruit at risk of tumbling off the table. A plaster Cupid stumbles clumsily onto the scene. The apples shimmer. The oranges quiver. A dazzling white sheet floats across the canvas. 

'Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.’

Scientists have since observed that Cézanne's woozy imagery corresponds with the way we actually see the world. Our eyes are not static when we look, but are making frequent tiny darting movements, ‘saccades’, between areas of visual interest. 

Cezanne’s portraits are like his still lifes. You get more of a sense of the sitters’ presence than of their personality. Here’s his wife Marie Hortense, whom he painted 29 times over 25 years. She sits in a yellow chair, her lips pursed, her hair parted, her hands clasped on her lap. Here’s his son Paul, a dreamy melancholy soul. And here’s his phlegmatic gardener Vallier, legs crossed, hat pulled over an expressionless face. 

Paul Cezanne - Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair (1888-90). Art Institute Chicago

'The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.’

I was particularly struck by the thought that Cezanne’s revolution began in still life, the field of art with the lowest esteem. When I was a young ad man, everyone wanted to work on beer, cars and jeans. But it’s difficult to make an impression on a category that is already considered cool and creative; that already attracts the attentions of the great and the good. The Planners that made their name in my time did so on the roads less travelled, on difficult brands in unfashionable sectors - detergent and dog food, soup, soap and financial services. The stone that the builders rejected can indeed become the cornerstone.

Cezanne died in 1906 at the age of 67. He had always been admired by his fellow artists. Degas, Gaugin and Monet; Pissarro, Caillebotte and Renoir all kept his work. And Picasso referred to him as ‘the father of us all.’

‘Cezanne cannot put touches of two colours onto a canvas without it being an achievement.’
Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Cezanne taught us to find truth in nature; to reflect on and celebrate sensation; to look and look again - because even if we cannot fully comprehend the world around us, we can at least enjoy our perception of it.

'We live in a rainbow of chaos.’

'I pick my friends like I pick my fruit.
My Granny told me that when I was only a youth.
I don't walk around trying to be what I'm not.
I don't waste my time trying to get what you got.
I work at pleasin’ me,
'Cause I can't please you.
And that's why I do what I do
My soul flies free like a willow tree.
Doo wee, doo wee, doo wee
And if you don't want to be down with me, you don't want to pick from my
Apple tree.’

Erykah Badu, ‘Appletree' (R Bradford / E Badu)

No. 394

The Wise Physio: ‘Let’s Just Throw Everything at It’

Massage between wrestlers training 1904 . Vincent Monozlay

'Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.'
Henry Ford

In one of those senior moments that occur with increasing frequency nowadays, I’d fallen on the stairs while carrying a substantial plant pot to the roof. The incident left my right forearm in some considerable pain and it was taking many weeks to heal.

I knew I needed physiotherapy, but I was nervous about the prospect. Would it entail eccentric exercises, intimate massages and whale music?

My personal trainer pointed me in the direction of Dave, a body builder who used to run pubs in the East End. He sounded reassuringly robust.

Dave, who managed his physiotherapy practice out of a basement gym in Bethnal Green, had a muscular physique, a bald head and a firm handshake. 

‘What’s the problem, young man?’

As I explained my various aches and strains, Dave made a series of notes on his pad. He seemed to recognise my symptoms.

‘Yup. Yup. Got it,’ he said, as he fixed me with a hard analytical stare.

I was interested to hear Dave’s conclusions. Was there one particular method or manipulation that would soothe my condition? Did he have a favoured remedy to my specific injury?

At length Dave paused, put his pen to one side and announced:

‘Let’s just throw everything at it.’

And so, having positioned me face-down on a massage table, Dave proceeded to apply electrically charged acupuncture needles to my arm. These prompted my muscles to twitch in a slightly disconcerting fashion. He then vacuum-cupped the affected area to draw out the toxins. Next he scraped my sinews with a steel tool to stimulate the soft tissue. Finally he gave my right arm and shoulder a comprehensive massage.

I have to say it succeeded. There was definitely a sense of loosening and limbering. I’m not sure which of Dave’s battery of measures was most effective, but they certainly worked very well in concert. Indeed I was thoroughly impressed by his all-guns-blazing approach. 

In the world of commerce we may have a house style, a preferred method. We may like to address all problems with cool consideration and clinical precision. But occasionally – when there’s an escalation in events, when a big account is at risk  - we need to be prepared to change gear, to raise the metabolism, to set aside established techniques and best practice. Some urgent challenges demand that we explore all avenues; examine all fronts. They prompt us to restructure the team, review the process and relook at the data; to commission all manner of research and take on fresh perspectives. And more besides. As Dave would say:

‘Let’s just throw everything at it.’

'I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.'
Booker T. Washington

On a subsequent visit to Dave’s studio, he sat me down and checked if I’d been following his instructions.

‘Have you done the hot-and-cold treatment like I asked you?’

I hesitated for a moment, noting the severity of his stare.

‘I did buy the hot-and-cold pack, Dave.’

Dave said nothing. Perhaps it would be best to come clean.

‘I haven’t actually used it yet.’

Dave looked at me like a disappointed parent. I suspect he was accustomed to people falling short.

‘That’s alright, young man. All I demand from my clients is honesty.’

I breathed a sigh of relief and beat a hasty retreat. 

'And if you should miss my loving
One of these old days.
If you should ever miss the arms
That used to hold you so close, 
Or the lips that used to touch you so tenderly.
Just remember what I told you
The day I set you free.
Ain't no mountain high enough,
Ain't no valley low enough,
Ain't no river wild enough,
To keep me from you.’
Diana Ross, 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough’ (Ashford and Simpson)

No. 393