‘Will It Paint?’: John Singer Sargent and the Semiotics of Style

John Singer Sargent - Lord Ribblesdale

I recently visited an exhibition considering the importance of clothes and costume in the portraits of John Singer Sargent. (‘Sargent and Fashion’ is at the Tate Britain, London until 7 July.)

The show is a celebration of sensuous silks and satins; of long buttoned bodices and pleated organza skirts; of Chesterfield coats, velvet jackets and crimson dressing gowns. Sargent captures the play of light and shadow across garments, their undulating creases and folds. He revels in the detail of a black tulle dress, a scarlet cape and a mauve sash; the elegance of a Chantilly fan, an antique lace collar and a Kashmiri shawl.

The exhibition prompts us to reflect on the coded language of fashion, the semiotics of style.

Sargent was born to American parents in Florence in 1856. As a child he lived in several European countries, before training and establishing his artistic reputation in Paris.

In 1882 Sargent was so taken with fellow American-in-Paris, the beautiful Virginie Gautreau, that he convinced her to pose for a life-size portrait without a commission. He presented her in a long black evening gown with a plunging neckline, her arms and neck bare, her face turned to one side in a classical pose – and with one of the jewelled dress straps slipping from her shoulder.

French society was scandalised by the ‘indecency,’ and both Sargent and his sitter were stung by the criticism. The artist repainted the strap in an upright position and left Paris soon afterwards. He kept the painting, subsequently called ‘Madame X’, until after Gautreau’s death.

‘I suppose it is the best thing I have done.’

John Singer Sargent - Madame X (with a vintage photo of the original portrait)

In 1886 Sargent settled in London, joining a social circle of actors, artists, composers and writers. His studio on Tite Street in Chelsea had previously been home to the painter James McNeill Whistler, and Oscar Wilde lived opposite. 

Although Sargent painted a number of British aristocrats, for the most part his clientele was international new money. Their wealth derived from finance, commerce and industry, and they were set on securing social status – by buying grand houses and estates; by keeping the right company, hosting magnificent parties and making appropriate marriages. The clothes they wore and the portraits they commissioned all contributed to the process of assimilation. A striking portrait would attract large crowds at exhibition. It would be much discussed and broadly reproduced. And a full-length Sargent could cost around $120,000 in today’s money. The exhibition curators term this phenomenon the ‘economy of images’.

Almost half of Sargent’s female sitters wore black gowns. While black retained its association with mourning, in the late 19th century it became fashionable for women of all ages, not least because new synthetic aniline dyes enabled an intense pure depth of colour. When, on a visit to his friend Claude Monet, Sargent discovered that there was no black paint to be found, he declared that he simply couldn’t work.

John Singer Sargent - Lady Sassoon

This period also saw the rise of haute couture. Name brands like Paquin or Doucet provided their clients with what novelist Edith Wharton described as ‘social armour.’ Many of Sargent’s sitters wore outfits from Charles Worth, an English designer who dominated Parisian fashion, and catered particularly to British and American customers. A Worth gown would cost between $10,000 and $30,000 today.

‘I have Delacroix’s sense of colour and I compose. A toilette [a complete ensemble, from the French word toile, cloth] is as good as a painting.'
Charles Worth

In the exhibition, Sargent’s work is displayed alongside examples of period fashion, including several original garments featured in his paintings. Although the artist claimed that ‘I only paint what I see,’ throughout the gallery we can observe where he has adjusted a strap here, removed a bow there. He clearly styled his sitters, pinning, draping, tucking and folding their gowns to create new shapes and textures. For his portrait of Lady Sassoon, he pinned her black silk taffeta opera cloak, so that the bright lining was more visible, creating a dramatic river of pink.

Foreshadowing today’s Instagram culture, one French critic noted, ‘there is now a class who dress after pictures, and when they buy a gown ask ‘will it paint?’’

Sargent was just as interested in painting fashionable men as women.

The surgeon Samuel Pozzi stands proud in a red dressing gown and Turkish slippers, one hand on heart and the other toying with the cord of his robe.

John Singer Sargent - Dr Pozzi at Home

The debonair Lord Ribblesdale looks rather superior in a long dark velvet-collared coat, buff breeches and polished black boots. Sporting grey kid gloves and a hunting whip, the elegant outfit is completed with a top hat and flamboyant silk muffler tied to one side. It was said of Ribblesdale that ‘he never stepped out of his picture frame.’

Sargent painted the young illustrator and designer W Graham Robertson holding a jade-topped walking stick and wearing a long, black wool Chesterfield overcoat. Robertson recalled that, during the sittings, the artist would ‘pull and drag the unfortunate coat more and more closely around me until it might have been draping a lamp-post.’ Sargent subsequently declared:

‘The coat is the picture.’

John Singer Sargent - W Graham Robertson

All in all, it’s a splendid exhibition, full of glamour, performance and personality.

Whilst marvelling at the flamboyance of the fashions featured in Sargent’s portraits, we may imagine that the sartorial codes and social values of late 19th century high society are a million miles away from our own. Surely we live in a more liberated, egalitarian world of informal attitudes and casualised style.

But clothes continue to signal something about our individual identity and sense of belonging. 
In the first half of my career, I dressed casually for work. Until my clients donned trainers, chinos and Ralph Lauren Polo shirts. I promptly switched to city suits, keen to create some distance and differentiation. I was amused to learn that Sargent played a similar game. While painting his clientele in their elegant finery, he himself tended to wear a sober business suit.

On encountering the artist in 1899, the poet Wilfred Scawen Blunt described him as ‘a rather good-looking fellow in a pot hat, whom at my first sight I took to be a superior mechanic.’

Whether we like it or not, we are constantly judging and being judged.


'When you wear your high-heeled boots with your hip-hugger suit,
It's all right, you're outta sight.
And you wear that cute mini-skirt with your brother's sloppy shirt,
I admit it, girl, that I can dig it.

When you wear your bell bottom pants,
I just stand there in a trance.
I can't move, you're in the groove.
Would you believe, little girl, that I am crazy about you?

When you wear those big earrings, long hair and things,
You got style, girl, that sure is wild.
And you wear that cute trench coat and you're standing and posing,
You got soul, you got too much soul.’

Brenton Wood, 'The Oogum Boogum Song’ (A Smith)

No. 474

Aspirational Analogies

I was chatting recently to a Young Person about her career. Frustrated with her employers’ intransigence, she was considering resignation.

I naturally urged caution. Over the years I’ve seen quite a few people walk away from good roles in a fit of pique, often without giving due attention to their next move.

And so I reached for a helpful analogy:

‘You shouldn’t finish with one boyfriend until you have another one lined up.’

The Young Person nodded slowly, clearly considering my wise counsel.

The next day she messaged me:

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said. It’s not right at all. You should just finish with a boyfriend if he’s the wrong guy, whether you’ve another partner waiting or not.’

Yes, of course. I’d been tripped up by my own metaphor.

The thing is I do like an analogy.

'Analogy, although it is not infallible, is yet that telescope of the mind by which it is marvellously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth.’
Charles C Colton

Over the years I have encouraged Planners and Strategists to think of themselves as psychoanalysts, flaneurs and cavaliers; to channel Bette Davis, Miles Davis and Miss Jean Brodie; to reflect on Casandra, Medea and the Trojan Wars. I’ve asked them to consider wind tunnels, spinning ballerinas and silent discos; to contemplate ‘70s crew cuts, shaving in the dark and the freezer in my garden shed. I’ve suggested they behave like a dog rather than a pig, a fox rather than a hedgehog, a gardener rather than a mechanic. And more besides.

'It has been said that discovery consists in seeing an analogy which nobody had seen before.'
Arthur Koestler

I’m firmly of the view that creative people in any discipline can learn from the great practitioners of film and fashion, art, theatre, music and dance. I believe that there are universal life lessons that can be discerned from everyday encounters and experiences. I think that when we are confronting challenges at work, it is healthy to step outside the narrow confines of one’s particular circumstances – the cliched advice; the tried and tested responses; the conventional choices.

And so, yes, although I was wrong in this instance, I do find analogies helpful.

'Nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which is wont to be simple and always consonant to itself.’
Isaac Newton

I read recently in the Times (3 March, Rhys Blakely) about a study carried out at the University of Essex (and published in the Journal of Sports Sciences). It suggests that a well-chosen analogy can instantly improve sporting performance by 3%.

The research looked at 20 footballers from the Tottenham Hotspur youth academy. Sometimes, before sprint drills, the coaches gave the teenagers ‘internal’ instructions that addressed particular body movements -  ‘extend your hips’ or ‘drive your legs into the ground’ for instance. At other times they gave the players directions that focused on their ‘external’ environment – such as ‘accelerate like a jet plane’ or ‘jump up into the air as if the ground is hot.’ 

The academics found that ‘external’ analogies immediately boosted sprinting speeds over 20 meters by 3 per cent, an improvement that would normally require weeks of training. ‘Internal analogies’ on the other hand tended to prompt over-thinking.’

‘When they start to focus on their body, there’s a risk that you turn what should be an automatic process, something that’s done without thinking, into a non-automatic process - suddenly you’re impeding the execution of that movement…The key is to concentrate on the external environment, but to do it in such a way that biomechanic information is concealed in language that anyone can understand.’
Dr Jason Moran

Perhaps studies like this will encourage business leaders to set aside the corporate script; to expand their vocabulary and reach for more imaginative similes and metaphors; to inspire their colleagues with more lateral, thought-provoking illustrations and examples.

'Apt analogies are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician.'
Winston Churchill

And maybe, with the benefit of a few aspirational analogies, Spurs will win their first silverware for some time...


‘Whenever I’m lonely,
Whenever I want you near.
I use my imagination,
Then suddenly you appear.
Whenever I’m sad,
And feeling a little blue.
My imagination brings me,
Closer to you.
My imagination
Is the only way I’ll have you.’

The Supremes, ‘My Imagination’

No. 473

Mary Quant: Becoming Bored Before Everyone Else

'All a designer can do is anticipate a mood before people realize that they are bored. It is simply a matter of getting bored first.’
Mary Quant

I recently enjoyed the documentary ‘Quant,’ celebrating the life and work of fashion designer Mary Quant (2021, directed by Sadie Frost).

'Fashion is a tool to compete in life outside the home. People like you better, without knowing why, because people always react well to a person they like the looks of.’

Quant, who passed away last year at the age of 93, brought affordable fun, freedom and comfort to female fashion. She designed for the Chelsea Girl, a young, emancipated working woman who kicked against tradition and convention. She introduced short, simple, streamlined garments, in bright, bold colours and patterns, worn with flat shoes and sharp haircuts. She democratised the jersey dress, the miniskirt, tights and trousers; skinny rib sweaters and PVC rainwear. She grew a successful business that expanded internationally and beyond clothes into make-up and homeware. And she taught us some compelling lessons about the creative mindset.

'Rules are invented for lazy people who don't want to think for themselves.’

1. Speak Like a Child

'I grew up not wanting to grow up.’

Barbara Mary Quant was born in 1930 in Woolwich, London, the daughter of Welsh schoolteachers. She had a blissful childhood, running wild with her younger brother in the Pembrokeshire countryside. 

‘I was the usual split personality as a child. One minute climbing trees, only wanting to play with boys and throw stones and steal apples and the rest of it. But equally there was the other side, where I just adored dolls and clothes.’

Quant found adulthood an unattractive prospect.

‘The day I was 13 I cried all day because old age had struck… Growing meant to me getting into stockings and suspenders… and high heels and having artificial hair and artificial nails. You know, a bosom that came into the room about 2 minutes before the rest of you.’

2. Find the Outcasts

Quant studied illustration and art education at Goldsmiths College, one of a number of British art schools that were inspiring a new generation at the time. She found true soul mates there.

‘We saw ourselves as sort of outcasts really, and trying to somehow gang together in Chelsea with a very few other people who felt as outcast as we did.’

Goldsmiths taught Quant to see the world differently.

‘We didn’t like the way things were, didn’t like the way things looked, the way people lived.’

3. Don’t Be Tasteful, Be Vulgar

Britain in the 1950s was a bleak, austere country, still recovering from World War 2, and young people were determined to change things.

‘We’d won a war and lost so much at the same time. There was a new generation that came romping through with high confidence and high spirits, and the generation that should have been there to control everything just let us do it.’

After finishing her degree, Quant pursued her fashion ambitions with an apprenticeship at a Mayfair milliner.

High-end design was at the time dominated by Christian Dior’s New Look, which, despite its name, was nostalgic for pre-war times. Quant instinctively felt uneasy with couture’s elite customer base and its establishment views.

‘We don’t want to look like a duchess…. Good taste is death. Vulgarity is life.’

4. Find Partners with Complementary Skills

At art school Quant had met her future husband and business partner, Alexander Plunket Greene. While she was somewhat diffident and reserved, he was a tall, charming, fun-loving aristocrat. He became a natural PR-man for Quant’s work.

‘Nobody said you can’t do it. We just did it.’

With £5000 that Plunket had inherited, and with financial advice from the entrepreneur Archie McNair, in 1955 Quant took a mortgage on a property on the King’s Road, Chelsea and opened her first boutique, Bazaar.

5. Risk It, Go for It

Bazaar was unlike the tired department stores and inaccessible designer shops of the time. The boutique had music, drinks and long hours for its customers’ convenience. It was also cramped and somewhat chaotic, with shoppers often changing on the shop-floor among packing cases.

‘Nobody said you’re not supposed to do it like that.’

The displays featured mannequins in quirky poses, which drew queues of curious young women and prompted angry bowler-hatted men to beat their fists on the windows.

'Risk it, go for it. Life always gives you another chance, another go at it. It's very important to take enormous risks.’

6. Design For People Like You

With her lean figure and short, geometric Vidal Sassoon bob, Quant embodied a youthful new style.

‘I just started making and designing clothes for people like me.’

She set about creating short, narrow, simple garments in an array of bright, bold colours and patterns. Shift dresses and pinafores, trousers, breeches and knickerbockers - clothes that promised comfort, fun and freedom of movement.

‘The clothes were very short and very simple. The shoes were very flat, so that you could run, dance, jump. All the clothes were very simple, but put together they had a very strong look.’

7. Be Inspired by Adjacent Worlds

Quant sought inspiration in the fashion worlds adjacent to womenswear.

'I liked masculine fabrics: Prince of Wales checks, city pinstripes and flannels - worn with black tights, flattish shoes.’

Trousers had for some time been worn by women in Hollywood and the services, and by students. But Quant popularised them for young females, introducing spotted cropped pants, breeches and dungarees. She also elongated men’s shirts into dresses and lengthened men’s cardigans.

‘Clothes are a statement about oneself or what one wants to be.’

The jumpers that she wore as a child prompted her to design skinny-rib sweaters. And her trips to the United States suggested the idea of ‘homewear’- special clothes for lounging in at home - 'underwear as outerwear.'

‘I hated fashion the way it was. I wanted clothes to be far more casual and easygoing and yet still sexy.’

8. Be inspired By Your Audience

'I liked my skirts short because I wanted to run and catch the bus to get to work.’

Skirts had been getting shorter since the 1950s, and the designer André Courrèges took them above the knee in the early ‘60s. But it was Quant who made the miniskirt mainstream, naming it after her favourite make of car.

Male Interviewer: Few girls have the legs, hips and, above all, panache to carry it off majestically.

Quant: But who wants to be majestic?

Quant was keen to point out that the driving force behind this fashion revolution was the consumer herself: the liberated, working woman, the Chelsea Girl.

'It was the girls on the King's Road who invented the miniskirt. I was making easy, youthful, simple clothes, in which you could move, in which you could run and jump and we would make them the length the customer wanted. I wore them very short, and the customers would say, 'Shorter, shorter!’'

The convention in those days was for women to wear stockings, often in 'American Tan', held up by garters and suspender belts - all very fiddly and uncomfortable. As Quant cut her skirts shorter, so she promoted tights to go with them - in black, and in bright mustard, ginger and prune.

‘I think a revolution was going on which fashion people hadn’t realised. I think the change of focus had gone from the rich international couture thing to the young working girl. She was going to set the pace in fashion, decide what was right and what was wrong.’

9. Be Inspired by Technology

Quant also turned to the latest technology for ideas.

‘The modern look is sexy, pretty, polished and dry cleaned.’

Jersey, a material traditionally used in men’s underwear, had been adopted by Coco Chanel for daywear in the 1920s and ‘30s. Quant employed new synthetic fabrics like Crimplene and Acrilan, which could be mass-produced at low cost. Her jersey dresses came in numerous colours and shapes, with different collars, sleeves, zips and buttons.

‘Sometimes all ideas come from the technology and sometimes the other way round.’

Quant was also fascinated by the space-age possibilities afforded by polyvinyl chloride (PVC), ‘this super shiny man-made stuff and its shrieking colours.’ Her 1963 'Wet Collection' featured entirely PVC garments, combining functionality with striking visual effects.

'Fashion is not frivolous. It is a part of being alive today.’

10. Be Permanently Dissatisfied

As Quant grew more successful in the UK and abroad, she remained restless to invent new designs and explore new frontiers.

'Fashion is a very ongoing, renewing thing, about change and reaching for the next thing. You are permanently dissatisfied, and it's always got to get better.’

In particular, she became frustrated with the cosmetics that women were wearing with her clothes.

‘I got involved with make-up because now that the clothes were different, the face was wrong.’

Tired of the ornamental nature of incumbent products, and inspired by the more theatrical make-up employed by catwalk models, in 1966 Quant launched a cosmetics line of bold shades in a simple all-in-one paintbox package, and featuring her trademark daisy logo. 

‘I think the point of clothes for women should be: 1. that you’re noticed; 2. that you look sexy; and 3, that you feel good. I can’t see that we wear them to keep warm.’

11. Be Stubborn

As a female entrepreneur working in a still predominantly male environment, Quant had to endure a good deal of sexism. She was clearly incredibly resilient.

'The fashionable woman wears clothes. The clothes don’t wear her.’

In the documentary Quant tries to explain her vision for a new fragrance line to a sceptical male perfumier.

Quant: It seems to me that to be a woman now is a very schizophrenic situation… And I think this perverse schizophrenia is the mood I would like to arrive at.

Perfumier: Yes, I would agree entirely. But I think that to satisfy that you have to come up with two types of perfume.

Quant (Impatient): But it’s the same woman!

12. Retain Creative Control

As Quant’s business expanded across the world, so did the pressure on her to keep producing new designs; to maintain the machine. 

'One of the things I've learned is never to hoard ideas, because either they are not so relevant or they've gone stale. Whatever it is, pour it out.’

Quant turned to licensing her brand to sustain its success.

‘Licensing allows you to extend your brand to new markets, new areas, new categories. Which can be very exciting for a brand. But it’s about control and it’s about a sense of understanding between the licensee and the licensor. That’s where you’ve got to get it right.’

Inevitably Quant did lose some of her creative control in these deals. In the documentary she complains that one of her commercial partners wants her to remove the pockets from a dress design.

'Well, you know, he’d like to get rid of these pockets all together. I think it makes the whole thing. And it’ll save him 10 pence.’

13. Live in the Future

'Most of my memories of the ‘60s are ones of optimism, high spirits and confidence.’

As the ‘60s drew to a close the mood changed from optimism about the future to one of disillusion and protest. Fashion turned to Bohemian and ethnic styles; to floaty dresses and flared, faded jeans. Quant’s modernism seemed less relevant.

'The whole 1960s thing was a ten-year running party, which was lovely. It started at the end of the 1950s and sort of faded a bit when it became muddled with flower power.’

Bazaar closed in 1969, and through the ‘70s and ‘80s Quant concentrated on household goods and make-up. In 2000 she resigned as director of Mary Quant Ltd after a Japanese buy-out. 

Mary Quant had anticipated the Swinging ‘60s and come to embody its lean, fun-loving, modernist attitudes. She had changed the way British women dressed and thought about clothes.

‘Fashion is all about change. And I’m designing for the future.’

As well as being a revolutionary designer and resolute businesswoman, Quant was articulate about the role of fashion in women’s lives.

‘Fashion is for now, not necessarily for teenagers... If you’re still enjoying living and you’re still enjoying being a woman and being sexy and being alive, then one wants surely to wear the clothes of today.’

I was particularly struck by the way she characterised ennui as a positive and productive force in consumer culture.

‘I think that a designer has to be someone who is permanently bored – permanently bored with the way people look at any particular time, wanting to live in the future, wanting to change things.’

Quant suggests a compelling challenge for creative people working in any industry: become bored before everyone else!

 

'I just don't know what to do with myself.
Don't know just what to do with myself.
I'm so used to doing everything with you,
Planning everything for two,
And now that we're through.

I just don't know what to do with my time.
I'm so lonesome for you it's a crime.
Going to a movie only makes me sad.
Parties make me feel as bad.
When I'm not with you
I just don't know what to do.

Like a summer rose
Needs the sun and rain,
I need your sweet love
To beat all the pain.’

Dusty Springfield, 'I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself’ (B Bacharach, H David)

No. 472

Expressionists: The Creative Melting Pot

Franz Marc, Tiger

I recently visited a splendid exhibition of Expressionist art at the Tate Modern, London (until 20 October).

‘We were only a group of friends who shared a common passion for painting as a form of self-expression. Each of us was interested in the work of the other…in the health and happiness of the others.’
Gabriele Munter

The Expressionists were a loose community of artists based around Munich in the early 1900s. Originating from Eastern Europe and North America, from Russia and Austro-Hungary, they endeavoured to convey subjective interpretations of the world around them; to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than the physical reality. Painting simplified forms, in bold colours with carefully framed compositions, they sought stimulus from folk art and foreign cultures; from spiritualism and child psychology; from colour theory and other media. They were true creative pioneers.

‘After a short period of agony, I took a giant leap forward, from copying nature – in a more or less Impressionist style – to feeling the contents of things, abstracting, conveying an essence.’
Gabriele Munter

Gabriele Münter Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin 1909 Lenbachhaus Munich, Donation of Gabriele Münter, 1957 © DACS 2024

At the exhibition we see vivid representations of couples debating at the dining room table; promenading in the park; reclining on a hillside in the sun. There are mystical skating rinks, circuses and stage shows; woozy street scenes and dreamy landscapes. With bold outlines Gabriele Munter presents elegant society women with purposeful stares – here’s a benign lady in a broad bright hat and purple shawl; and another with neat hair, sharp eyebrows and almond eyes. Franz Marc paints animated wildlife - a sinuous yellow tiger in the undergrowth; two brown deer playing in the snow; a sweet-eyed doe looking up to catch the light. And most radical of them all, Wassily Kandinsky gives us kaleidoscopic interiors, the milking of a psychedelic cow, and mysterious sacred visions - staging posts on the path to pure abstraction.

‘[Art has the power] to awaken this capacity for experiencing the spiritual in material and in abstract phenomena.’
Wassily Kandinsky

Bavaria provided a relatively liberal and open environment for the Expressionists to work. There was a prosperous middle class and a thriving academic and scientific community. They visited galleries and museums, studied Islamic art and purchased Japanese prints.

Some of them were fascinated by children’s creativity and toys; by recent psychological studies suggesting that kids had spiritual inner lives. Maria Franck-Marc painted children captivated by flowers; a girl in the garden cradling a toddler.

They explored colour theory - the impact of colour on mood - and investigated synaesthesia - experiencing one sense through another. In ‘Impression III (concert)’ Kandinsky, a skilled cellist, created a chromatic visual response to a musical performance by Arnold Schonberg.

‘Kandinsky paints pictures in which the external object is hardly more to him than a stimulus to improvise in colour and form and to express himself as only the composer expressed himself previously.’
Arnold Schonberg

Wassily Kandinsky - Impression III (Concert), 1911

Often members of the group went on sketching holidays to Murnau, a rural town in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps - swimming in the lake, skiing in the mountains, designing their own gardens. As they created work, they also debated ideas.

‘In every house one found at least two ateliers under the roof, where sometimes not so much was painted, but where always much was discussed, disputed, philosophised and diligently drunk.’
Wassily Kandinsky

The Expressionists were as much engaged with the past as the future. A rather beautiful Kandinsky image depicts a mythic knight riding along the river’s edge with a noblewoman in his arms and the luminous walls of a Russian town in the distance. They collected Bavarian folk craft and religious artefacts, experimenting with the traditional technique of reverse glass painting - by which an image is created on one side of a glass panel and viewed from the other.

The movement was also interested in pre-Christian faiths, Hinduism and Buddhism; in the emergent theories of Theosophy and spiritualism.

‘I’m striving to intensify my feeling for the organic rhythm of all things, trying to feel myself pantheistically to the quivering and flow of blood in nature, in trees, animals, the air.’
Franz Marc

The Expressionists teach us to break down boundaries wherever we see them; to seize inspiration wherever we find it. Theirs was a true creative melting pot, encapsulated by the Blue Rider Almanac - from which they took their group name, Der Blaue Reiter. Published in 1912, this volume of collected images and academic texts, included folk, religious and children's art, and featured works from all over the world.

‘Blue Rider…will be the call that summons all artists of the new era and rouses laymen to hear.’
Advert for The Blue Rider Almanac, 1911

Sadly, with the outbreak of the First World War, the collective dispersed. Marc was killed in combat, aged just 36. Kandinsky returned to Russia, others fled to Switzerland. This optimistic, outgoing, internationalist movement seemed suddenly out of step with the times.

‘In our case the principle of internationalism is the only one possible… The whole work, called art, knows no borders or nations, only humanity.’
Draft preface for The Blue Rider Almanac, 1911

Riding Couple by Wassily Kandinsky, 1906-1907
LENBACHHAUS MUNICH; DONATION OF GABRIELE MÜNTER, 1957; TATE MODERN

‘Where do you end?
Where do I begin?
Start over again,
Feels like we're melting, melting.
That's when I melt into you,
I melt into you.’

Kehlani, ‘Melt’ (N Perez, A Wansel, K A Parrish)

No. 471

The Net Curtain Strategist

Refaela Revach Looking out the window Painting

My childhood home in Romford looked out onto Heath Park Road, a relatively busy suburban street, lined with neat front gardens and pebble-dashed, semi-detached houses.

Over the rain-sodden school holidays my brother Martin and I often found ourselves stuck indoors, and our mother would invent tasks to occupy our time.

For one such assignment, she located us on stools by the living room window, supplying paper, pencils and a glass of squash. She then asked us to record the different colours of the cars passing by the house, in order to establish which shade was most popular.

‘Blue!’ ‘Red!’ ‘Blue!’ ‘Yellow!’

Eagle-eyed and attentive, with every new vehicle we added another stroke to a five-bar gate, setting about our objective with high seriousness.

I can’t say it was a particularly challenging or instructive exercise. Sometimes a metallic finish or striped van prompted a bit of debate. Sometimes the cars came past in a mad flurry all at once. And this being the ‘70s, most of the cars were just blue or red. (The black automobile was a rare sight back then.) 

Nonetheless, we spent many happy hours at that bay window.

Our monitoring of the traffic on Heath Park Road was given an extra frisson by the fact that, like secret agents, we were working unnoticed and out of sight. Most homeowners back then protected their privacy by hanging net curtains. These enabled residents to see out, but prevented passers-by from seeing in – a phenomenon quite beyond my crude understanding of science.

Over recent years the Planning discipline has grown in respect and recognition in the broader Agency community. We celebrate great insights and approaches. We cultivate our own flamboyant presentational styles. We lionize the best practitioners.

This is all of course to the good.

I would nonetheless suggest that for the most part good strategists work as if behind net curtains. Largely anonymous, quietly observing, seeing without being seen, they are unobtrusive and understated. They are also mindful of avoiding the Observer Effect, by which the act of measurement disturbs the object measured.

I am reminded that the great John Bartle, one of the BBH Founders, argued that Planners should contribute ideas without claiming authorship; that there is more chance of collective success if individuals are not striving for acknowledgement; that the best strategists are generous at heart.

‘Success has many parents, failure is an orphan - be happy to let others take the credit and success is more likely.’
John Bartle

I have occasionally wondered whether it was my mother’s car-monitoring exercise that set me on the path to strategy and research. Perhaps. But I’m not sure I ever really excelled at quantitative data and analysis.

'Every day now I can feel you watching me from afar,
And you've been leaving those love letters on my car.
So now I wonder, why you're so into me, in such a way
That you've got to take your spare time to chase after me.
What a shame.
So you like what you see?
Hey, you better put a hold on me.
So you like what you see?
Girl, you better put a hold on me.’
Samuelle, 'So You Like What You See’ (Samuelle, Foster & McElroy)

No. 470

Dugsi Dayz: Different Times Call for Different Tales

Munira: That’s haram you know. You can’t ignore a Muslim sister especially when she salaams you.
Hani: You didn’t even salaam me!
Munira: Assalamu’alaikum sis.
Hani: Wa alaikum assalam SIS.

‘Dugsi Dayz’ shines a light on the world of four British-Somali teenage girls held in Saturday detention at their Islamic school (Dugsi) in south-west London. A splendid play by Sabrina Ali, it was inspired by the 1985 movie ‘The Breakfast Club’. (Running at the Royal Court, London until 18 May, it certainly deserves a transfer.)

The girls’ Teacher (Macalin) has not turned up to invigilate, and so we watch them - shoes-off, bored and restless - as they bicker, debate and mess around to pass the time. Munira is the class joker - smart, eccentric and cheeky. Hani is cool, mysterious and aloof, quietly making notes in her journal. Yasmin, with bouncy curls popping out of her hijab, is obsessed with make-up, fashion and her phone. And finally there is Salma, the class swot in a black jilbab, diligently studying her copy of Islamic Reminders for Sisters, encouraging the others to reflect on their mistakes.

Salma: Seriously, Munira, music in a mosque?
Munira: It’s a podcast! What happened to assuming the best?

The girls speculate on what each of them has done to merit detention. They rummage amongst the confiscated items kept in the Macalin’s desk drawer.  They impersonate and poke fun at each other.

Yasmin: Dyslexia is not funny, Salma.
Munira: You’re not only mocking me, Salma, but a lot of great people. Einstein…Tom Cruise, Rosa Parks, Celine Dion.

We learn that, when they were younger, the girls’ mothers kept them in check by telling tales of fearsome long-eared Dhegodeer, who preys on badly behaved children; or the demonic Monkey Girl, who would come after them if they spent too much time listening to music, or if they threw the Quran on the floor.

Munira proposes that current teenage cohorts need new myths to help them navigate contemporary challenges.

Munira: I’ve realised, there’s like no scary Somali folk stories for the next generation of kids… Like for the younger kids… We need some hair raising, blood curdling …We need to basically pass on the torch.

Whilst conservative Salma thinks that youngsters should be warned about lack of respect, wearing excessive make-up and spending too much time on TikTok, the other girls have different perils in mind.

Yasmin: I say we should warn kids about things we wish we knew when we were younger.

Yasmin invents a story about an intelligent, beautiful, high-achieving girl who falls for a young man with ‘dazzling bling, a charming smile and spell-binding cologne.' The chap turns out to be a hopeless good-for-nothing.

Yasmin: She spent most of her time studying, so she didn’t have any experience dating or spotting red flags…The sweet musk he carried was gone and was replaced by the smell of old socks and BO.

Munira’s yarn features a spirited, independent teenager, not unlike herself. One night, when waiting at a bus stop, she is attacked by two sharp-toothed vampire aunties in long flowing jilbabs, who ‘sweep across the floor with a natural grace and swiftness, you would think they were on hoverboards.’

Munira: Don’t trust Somali aunties, cause they’re vampires who want to suck the life and soul out of you…I’m warning the girls of the next generation to run for their life if they ever see them blood-sucking vampires.

‘Dugsi Dayz’ is a tender, insightful, funny play, celebrating a community whose perspective is rarely seen; whose voice is seldom heard.

Popcorn Writing Award 2023 winner Sabrina Ali, for her play Dugsi Dayz

I was quite taken with its suggestion that different times require different tales.

I entered the world of work in the late 1980s, when corporate folk lore commended long hours, shareholder capitalism, winning-at-all cost  and a dog-eat-dog mentality. It was a fairly aggressive, muscular culture.

Surely young people joining today’s workplace need to hear about a new kind of heroism: stories of interdependence and the triple bottom line; of creativity and collaboration; of emotional intelligence and resilience.

By the end of the play, the four characters have grown closer, through shared laughter and storytelling. They are released to go their separate ways.

Salma: So wait, what? Does this mean we’re like friends now?
Munira: This isn’t The Breakfast Club, Salma. We’ll see you next Saturday in Dugsi.

'I wish that I knew what I know now,
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now,
When I was stronger.’

The Faces, ‘Ooh La La’ (R Lane / R Wood)

No. 469

Machinal: Why Do We Put Soft People in Hard Places?

I recently watched a fine production of Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 play ‘Machinal.’ (The Old Vic Theatre, London until 1 June.)

‘Machinal’ tells the tale of a young female stenographer who feels out of place in modern society. It is related in nine short scenes, and the dialogue is repetitious, crisp and jagged, suggesting the harsh rhythms of the city and office life.

Adding Clerk: 2490, 28, 76, 123, 36842, 1, ¼, 37, 804, 23, ½, 982.
Filing Clerk: Accounts – A. Bonds – B. Contracts  - C. Data – D. Earnings – E.
Stenographer: Dear Sir – in re – your letter – recent date – will state –
Telephone Girl: Hello – Hello – George H Jones Company good morning – hello hello – George H Jones Company good morning – hello.

The Young Woman (she is not given a name) is of a nervous disposition. She struggles with the precipitous pace and relentless pressure of day-to-day urban existence. She feels claustrophobic on the subway, and is frequently late for work.

Young Woman: I had to get out!
Adding Clerk: Out!
Filing Clerk: Out?
Stenographer: Out where?
Young Woman: In the air!
Stenographer: Air?
Young Woman: All those bodies pressing.
Filing Clerk: Hot dog!
Young Woman: I thought I would faint! I had to get out in the air!

The Young Woman has reached the end of her tether. But she receives little sympathy from her dependent, nagging mother.

Young Woman: I can’t go on like this much longer – going to work – coming home – going to work - coming home – I can’t - Sometimes in the subway I think I’m going to die – sometimes even in the office if something don’t happen – I got to do something – I don’t know – it’s like I’m tight inside.

Playwright and journalist Sophie Treadwell (c. 1925)

She decides to marry her boss as a means of escape, a route to some sort of security - despite not being the least bit attracted to him. He is a bald, thin man with flabby hands, who repeats the same crude jokes, claims to understand women, and tells her to relax. She flinches when he touches her.

Husband: I got a lot of ‘em up my sleeve yet – that’s part of what I owe my success to – my ability to spring a good story – You know – you got to learn to relax, little girl – haven’t you?...That’s one of the biggest things to learn in life. That’s part of what I owe my success to.

And so the Young Woman remains trapped - now in a tedious, unequal, loveless marriage.

Husband: Aren’t you listening?
Young Woman: I’m reading.
Husband: What you reading?
Young Woman: Nothing.
Young Woman: Must be something.

In time she gives birth to a child she feels no connection with. Her anxiety is amplified by her husband’s solipsism; by his constant encouragement to ‘pull herself together.’

Husband: Now see here, my dear, you’ve got to brace up, you know! And  - and face things! That’s what makes the world go round. I know all you’ve been through but… But you’ve got to brace up now! Make an effort! Pull yourself together! Start the uphill climb!...Will power! That’s what conquers! Look at me!

The Young Woman finds herself on a path to an affair with a man she meets in a bar, and from there to a plan to murder her husband.

‘Machinal’ is a compellingly tragic tale of someone confined to a world to which she doesn’t belong; to a society with which she shares no values; to a hierarchy in which she is powerless. There is a sense that her downfall is inevitable. The French word ‘machinal’ means mechanical or automatic.

Young Woman: Leave me alone! Oh my god am I never to be let alone! Always to have to submit – to submit!

Sophie Treadwell was born in 1885 and raised in California. Despite suffering mental health problems, she had a successful career as a journalist - writing an undercover series on homeless women, gaining an exclusive interview with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, covering the First World War in Europe. Often inspired to pen plays by her experiences as a reporter, she wrote ‘Machinal’ after attending the sensational 1927 trial of Ruth Snyder - a woman who murdered her husband with the help of her travelling salesman lover.

In her preface to the play, Treadwell explains that the lead in her story is ‘an ordinary woman, any woman.’

‘The woman is essentially soft, tender, and the life around her is essentially hard, mechanised. Business, home, marriage, having a child, seeking pleasure – all are difficult for her – mechanical, nerve nagging.’

We no longer live in a world of stenographers and adding clerks. And thankfully modern work culture is more fluid and flexible; more casual and informal; more sensitive to individuality and mental health.

Nonetheless the anxiety, claustrophobia and impotence at the heart of ‘Machinal’ may be painfully familiar to us.

We still expect complex, sensitive, messy human beings to work within rigid, relentless, rational systems. We create a pressure to conform, to fit in, to toe the line.

And this leads to an inevitable dissonance - which may be all the more jarring in the creative industries, where we need ‘soft’ people to invent emotionally compelling ideas.

It is worth being reminded: beware of placing soft people in hard places.

Adding Clerk: She doesn’t belong in an office.
Telephone Girl: Who does?

'And I have this dream where I'm screaming underwater,
While my friends are waving from the shore.
And I don't need you to tell me what that means,
I don't believe in that stuff anymore.
Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time,
And that's just how I feel.
Always have and I always will.
I always have and always will.’

Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Funeral'

No. 468

The Story Juke Box: Recognising the Positive Power of Humour in the Workplace

Wurlitzer Phonograph Jukebox Advertisement – 1951

'Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.'
W H Auden

A few times a year I have lunch with five former colleagues. Old friends, we discuss developments in our home lives and careers; recent holidays and overseas adventures; contemporary politics, sport and culture.

We also spend a good deal of the afternoon reminiscing about work. We remember much-loved characters, amusing meetings and pivotal parties. We exchange anecdotes about heroic pitch failures, disastrous presentations and awkward interviews. We interrupt and undermine the narrators, pursue wild digressions and make approximate impersonations. We dispute the creative merits of the Surf Bubble Man.

'A day without laughter is a day wasted.'
Charlie Chaplin

Over the years our yarns have been embellished and exaggerated. The identities and roles of the protagonists have sometimes changed around. Occasionally I wonder whether we’re recollecting an actual event, or simply recalling the telling and retelling of the story.

And yet, with every recounting of a tale we laugh like drains.

Odd perhaps. We’ve heard all these stories before. Their twists and turns are well rehearsed. Their punchlines are entirely familiar.

We sometimes refer to this phase of the lunch as the Story Juke Box. Press the right buttons and out pops the anecdote. C37 The Big Table in the Big Restaurant. A11 The Graduate Trainee Pitch Presentation. E15 Pep’s Conversation with the Ambulance Man.

What’s going on? Why are we doing this? Why are we playing the same old tunes, over and over again?

'I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.'
Maya Angelou

The recently published book ‘Supercommunicators' by Charles Duhigg considers how NASA recruits astronauts for the International Space Station. Mindful that they need people who can get along with others for six months - in low gravity, high proximity and high stress – NASA’s psychiatrists pay particular attention to how the candidates laugh in interview.

They have established that less than 20 per cent of conversational laughter is elicited by humour; and that most laughs are prompted by social factors. They believe that this social laughter is a reliable indicator of how much prospective recruits are predisposed to emotional connection.

Some may regard humour in the workplace as unnecessary, unprofessional and distracting. But I always found it useful for dealing with setbacks and anxiety; for establishing shared values; for undermining pomposity and speaking truth to power.

'Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.'
Bob Newhart

I suspect that when we veterans recount our yarns we’re really just signalling our ongoing emotional commitment to each other; reinforcing the ties that bind us together.

'There is little success where there is little laughter.'
Andrew Carnegie

Of course, there’s a concern that the Story Juke Box is pickling our relationships in the past. Restless Ben is always advocating new stories, proposing that we look to the future, focus on tomorrow.

I confess I tend to be the voice for nostalgia. I take a particular pleasure from ancient myths and golden memories. You can’t beat the old tunes.

'Don't play that song for me,
Because it brings back memories.
The days that I once knew,
The days that I spent with you.
Oh no, don't let them play it.
It fills my heart with pain.
Please, stop it right away,
Because I remember just what he said.
He said ‘darling’,
And I know that he lied.
You know that you lied.
You know that you lied, lied, you lied.’

Aretha Franklin, ‘Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)’ (A Ertegun / B Nelson)

No. 467

Byron’s Decoupage Screen: Reflecting on Celebrity, High Art and Low Culture

Decoupage Screen, Front and Reverse

'What is the end of fame? 'tis but to fill
A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour;
For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper,"
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.’
Lord Byron, ‘Don Juan’

At a recent visit to the National Portrait Gallery in London, I came across a large folding decoupage screen once owned by Lord Byron.

Decoupage is the art of decorating an object by gluing onto it coloured paper cut-outs from prints or magazines; and then finishing it with a special paint or varnish. Practiced by craftsmen in Italy and France during the eighteenth century, decoupage had become a fashionable hobby by Byron’s time.

This six-foot high, four-panelled screen was created around 1814 by Henry Angelo, Byron’s fencing coach. It could have been used to block out drafts or afford some privacy. Or perhaps it was simply intended for the poet’s amusement. 

The screen is covered on one side with notable characters from English theatrical history: portraits of Shakespeare, Sarah Siddons and Edmund Kean; scenes from plays and representations of monuments. 

On the other side we find bare-knuckle boxers in action poses – long forgotten figures like Jack Broughton and James Figg; Tom Cribb and Tom Molineaux, the formerly enslaved American fighter. These pictures are surrounded by biographies and accounts of bouts cut from the pages of Pierce Egan’s Boxiana or Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism.

'The best of prophets of the future is the past.'
Lord Byron, Journal 1821 

It’s a rather beautiful object in its own right. Busy, bustling, bursting with life. An early nineteenth century version of Pop Art; a scrap-book of contemporary enthusiasms. It’s also a fascinating historical document. It demonstrates that the gifted poet did not just have his head in the clouds. He had a passion for sport and the dramatic arts; for popular culture and celebrity. He was a fan.

'But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.'
Lord Byron, ‘Don Juan’

Detail of painting: George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, in Albanian costume, painted by Thomas Phillips in 1813

We think of celebrity as a phenomenon of the modern era. But the public have been obsessing about famous people for centuries: athletes were lauded in archaic Greek poetry; actors kept the company of political leaders in Pericles’ Athens; gladiators were feted in ancient Rome; emperors had their profiles stamped on coins that travelled to every corner of their domain.

The cult of celebrity runs deep. We imagine we know these special individuals, that we have insight into their thoughts and feelings. We admire their looks and talents; their taste and wit. We aspire to their glamorous lifestyle. We love and envy them.

The phenomenon has, of course, been magnified by successive revolutions in media: from the printing press to radio and cinema; from television to social networks. In Byron’s time awareness of famous people was circulated through the booming platforms of periodicals and prints. Each innovation fuels the public’s appetite to know a little more, to get a little closer.

'Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.’
Lord Byron, Stanzas Written on the Road Between Florence and Pisa

In the world of advertising, celebrities have long been recognised as vehicles for conferring recognition and positive associations. Although consumers know that money has changed hands, there’s still a sense that their hero has endorsed this brand; that they genuinely like and use it. A form of cognitive dissonance, I suppose.

I confess that when I worked in the industry I tended to avoid celebrity campaigns. For me they entailed borrowed interest, taking a conceptual short-cut. And of course they often came at a high price and with reputational risk. But there’s no denying their effectiveness when brand and spokesperson act in synergy. People adore celebrity.

'All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin.'
Lord Byron, ‘Don Juan'

Detail from Screen

I was particularly taken with the fact that Byron was a fan of both high art and low culture: theatre and boxing. As an adolescent I was concerned that my admiration of Homer and Handel; Goya and Graham Greene might be undermined by my devotion to sixties soul music and the Likely Lads. But then – prompted by Melvyn Bragg and the South Bank Show – I came to appreciate that different moods have different cultural modes; that any individual has multiple facets to their personality. 

It’s only human to seek out both the spiritual and the everyday, the sacred and the profane. We should just follow our passions.

'There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.'
Lord Byron, ‘Don Juan’

'Who killed Davey Moore?
Why an' what's the reason for?
"Not us", said the angry crowd
Whose screams filled the arena loud.
"It's too bad he died that night,
But we just like to see a fight
We didn't mean for him to meet his death,
We just meant to see some sweat.
There ain't nothing wrong in that.
It wasn't us that made him fall.
No, you can't blame us at all.”'

Bob Dylan, 'Who Killed Davey Moore?'

No. 466

Yoko Ono: ‘A Dream You Dream Together is Reality’

Yoko Ono with glass hammer. Photo credit: © Clay Perry

A phone rings as we enter the gallery.

‘Hello. This is Yoko.’

It rings again and the message is repeated.

And so we pass through into a world of strange music, cryptic events and grainy black and white films; of bizarre objects, bean bags and neatly-typed instructions. One of Landseer’s lions on Trafalgar Square is wrapped in drop-cloths. There’s a tape recording of snow falling at dawn; a stethoscope to listen to time passing; and an apple you can buy for £200 ‘to experience the excitement of watching [it] decay.’ There are some shards of broken milk bottles that have also been put up for sale, each labelled with a date to represent a future morning.

‘It is a useless act. But by actively inserting such a useless act… into everyday life, perhaps I can delay culture.’

Many of the visitors are young, revelling in the participation and playfulness. Some draw their overlapping shadows onto a wall. A man hammers a nail into a wooden panel. People write thoughts of their mother and pin them up alongside others. Couples play games of chess where both sets of pieces are white. A young boy jumps into a black sack and rolls around on the floor making shapes.

This is a retrospective of Yoko Ono’s multidisciplinary art from the mid-1950s to the present day. (‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind’ is at Tate Modern, London, until 1 September.)

We realise that each piece has a serious intent. The snow recording and stethoscope suggest we should treasure time, appreciate our environment. The covered lion challenges the enduring legacy of empire and colonialism. The chess game prompts us to think of war and peace. (The accompanying instruction says it’s ‘for playing as long as you know where all your pieces are.’) The black sack exercise asks questions of identity.

‘When I did the ‘Bag Piece,’ we go in the bag, and we’re very different. And also we see the world through it, actually. And there’s a big difference between the world and us that way. By being in a bag, you show the other side of you, which is nothing to do with race, nothing to do with sex, nothing to do with age. Then you become just a spirit or soul. And you can talk soul to soul.’

 Born into a middle-class Japanese family in 1933, Ono grew up for the most part in Tokyo. During World War 2, when she was 12, she was evacuated to the countryside to avoid the bombing. She and her younger brother, short of food and basic necessities, would lie on their backs and look up at the sky, escaping the conflict in their imaginations.

‘We exchanged menus in the air and used our powers of visualization to survive.’

This she later observed was ‘maybe my first piece of art.’

Aged 23 Ono moved to New York where she organised events and concerts that combined poetry, atonal music, vocalisation and amplified sounds.

‘I wanted most things to be performed in the dark, thereby asking the audience to stretch their imaginations. A glimpse of things was seen by occasionally lit matches and torches. This went on for four hours.’

Yoko Ono performing ‘Lighting Piece’ (1955) at the Sogetsu Art Center, Tokyo, in 1962. Photo: Yasuhiro Yoshioka; © the artist

Ono started issuing instructions for paintings. Viewers were invited to ‘complete’ the artwork in their heads, the idea taking primacy over the object. Back in Japan she wrote further instructions, some physical and some mental.

‘Scream.
1. against the wind
2. against the wall
3. against the sky’

‘Cloud Piece
Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put it in.’

‘Stone Piece
Find a stone that is your size or weight.
Crack it until it becomes fine powder.
Dispose it in the river. (a)
Send small amount each to your friends. (b)
Do not tell anybody what you did.
Do not explain about the powder to the friends you send.’

In 1964 Ono first performed ‘Cut Piece’, in which she sat silently on stage wearing a suit while the audience excised pieces of her clothing with a pair of scissors.

‘To strip means not ‘to reveal to others’, but ‘to discover something hidden in humans’.’

Yoko Ono performs ‘Cut Piece’ (1964) in New York © Minoru

Ono’s work was funny, absurd, bonkers. But it was also fresh, thoughtful and disarming. Often partial or unfinished, it existed in the realms of the viewer’s imagination. It challenged preconceptions, asked questions and invited participation.

'The only sound that exists to me is the sound of the mind. My works are only to induce music of the mind in people… In the mind-world, things spread out and go beyond time.’

Between 1966 and 1971 Ono worked in England. At an exhibition in the Indica Gallery, London she encountered the musician John Lennon who offered her an imaginary five shillings to hammer an imaginary nail.

‘I met a guy who played the same game I played.’

PLAY IT BY TRUST aka WHITE CHESS SET (1966) “Play it for as long as you can remember who is your opponent and who is your own self”. Yoko Ono. 1966

In 1969 Ono and Lennon were married in Gibraltar and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam, campaigning with a week-long ‘Bed-in for Peace.’ The couple settled in New York, using their public platform to promote peace, co-opting the techniques of advertising and propaganda to amplify their message.

In 1980 Lennon was murdered outside their apartment building.

Ono has continued to call for peace, to raise awareness about migration issues, to criticise violence. Her 2009 work ‘A Hole’ featured a pane of glass shot through by a bullet. A label reads: ‘Go to the other side of the glass and see through the hole.’

She has often returned to the consoling presence of the sky.

‘Even when everything was falling apart around me, the sky was always there for me… I can never give up on life as long as the sky is there.’

I found this exhibition inspiring. It asks us to unmake the world; to reframe and rethink our deeply held assumptions; to act and join in; to imagine peace together.

‘A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.’


'Walking on thin ice
I'm paying the price
For throwing the dice in the air.
Why must we learn it the hard way
And play the game of life with your heart?
I gave you my knife,
You gave me my life,
Like a gush of wind in my hair.
Why do we forget what's been said,
And play the game of life with our hearts?
I may cry some day,
But the tears will dry whichever way,
And when our hearts return to ashes,
It'll be just a story.
It'll be just a story.’
Yoko Ono, ‘Walking on Thin Ice'

No.465