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

David Bomberg 1890–1957 Vision of Ezekiel 1912

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

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

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

‘I hate the Fat Man of the Renaissance.’ 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Bomberg, The Mud Bath, 1914. © Tate

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

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

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

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

David Bomberg, ‘Winter Night’

No. 266

‘We’re Here Because We’re Here’: Do Your Troops Know What They’re Here For?

Gassed by John Singer Sargent, Collection of the Imperial War Museum

Over the last few years there have been many publications, documentaries, exhibitions and events to mark the centenary of the First World War. For me the most touching discovery was a scratchy twenty-second recording of unfamiliar lyrics sung to a familiar tune.

Born to Irish parents in Fulham in 1895, Edward Dwyer joined the East Surrey Regiment at the age of 16. When war broke out he served in the Retreat from Mons, the first battle fought by the British Army against the Germans. After his heroic grenade defence of a trench on Hill 60 just outside Ypres in April 1915, he became (at the time) the youngest person to be awarded the Victoria Cross.

The following year, recuperating from injuries back in England, Dwyer made a sound recording on the Regal label. It is thought to be the only such recording of a serving British soldier during World War I. In less than six minutes he talks about life at the front, pay and rations and so forth. He observes that, to keep their spirits up, the troops sang songs with their own rewritten lyrics. To the tune of Auld Lang Syne he croons:

‘We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.

We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.’

Dwyer’s jaunty voice reaches out to us across a hundred years with eerie immediacy. It’s a tragic thought, that the soldiers on the front line had no real sense of why they were on a particular mission or manoeuvre. They got on with the job without knowing what the job was. And laughed about it.

This seems to me quite an indictment of leadership. You can’t expect the rank and file to have detailed knowledge of strategy. But surely they should be able broadly to articulate why they’re there.

In the world of commerce we spend a lot of time articulating corporate vision and values. We invest in colleague engagement exercises, cascade meetings and internal communications. We introduce staff to the latest thought pieces, catchy acronyms and mots du jour. We talk a great deal about the need to define the Purpose of our brands and businesses.

But are these efforts convincing or confusing? Are our Purposes genuinely for the benefit of the workforce? Or are they exercises in corporate vanity? Can we really be confident that, at a fundamental level, our staff know what they’re about? Or are they here because they’re here because they’re here?

Later the same year that Dwyer made that haunting recording, he was back on active service. On 3 September 1916 at Guillemont, in one of the many battles of the Somme, Corporal Edward Dwyer VC was killed in action. He was just a couple of months short of his twenty first birthday.

I wrote this piece to mark Armistice Day 2016.

’At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.’

Poppy Appeal

No. 106

NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND 6

Rehearsing and Editing Creativity

Next week the English National Ballet brings its award-winning programme of new ballets, Lest We Forget, to Sadler’s Wells. Three contemporary choreographers have created works reflecting in different ways on the First World War. I saw Lest We Forget last year at The Barbican and it’s a very moving experience. There are still some tickets available.

I attended a talk by Russell Maliphant who has created one of the pieces, Second Breath. Maliphant was classically trained, but has since used the learned vocabulary of classical ballet to create his own distinct choreographic language. He explores the interaction of movement and light with the eye of a film-maker. His dancers spin, twist and turn around each other. They redistribute each other’s weight, as if working with levers, pulleys and pistons. It’s a wonder to behold.

Maliphant explained that a lot of his creativity occurs when he’s working with his dancers in the studio, where he has the opportunity to respond to their different personalities and styles of movement. He also films his rehearsals and subsequently explores the possibilities available to him in the edit: rearranging the sequence of movement, deleting the unnecessary, reversing the action, slowing things down and speeding them up. This level of experimentation would not be possible, physically or financially, with live dancers in the studio.

In the communications business we often talk of work-shopping ideas; of giving creativity the room to breathe and develop in rehearsal; of exploring how technology can enrich (not just economise or speed up) the creative process. But it strikes me that hitherto this has been more rhetoric than common practice.

For the most part we’re still stuck in our linear, demarcated approach to idea development.  Concepts are formed in camera, refined through dialectic, pre-produced, produced. It’s a rhythm without fluidity or flexibility; without much space for creative collaboration or technical experimentation.

Couldn’t we do more to open the creative process up? Perhaps we need to take some dance lessons.

The Oresteia: Not A Window on the Ancient World, But a Mirror on Our Own

It’s Oresteia season in London as two productions of Aeschylus’ 458 BC tragedy open in theatres across town. Why do we feel the need to revisit this dark ancient story of murder and revenge? What relevance has it for us today?

In The Oresteia a father sacrifices his daughter to win over the gods; a wife kills her husband to atone for the murder of their daughter; a son kills his mother in vengeance for the death of his father; and the cycle of killings culminates in a court case. Blimey!

The Oresteia is a trilogy of plays about duty to one’s faith and community, to one’s family and to one’s self. There’s a sense that, once the series of revenge killings is in train, it will never stop. How could it? To some extent individuals are not masters of their own destiny. They are caught in a Fate-driven chain reaction of inevitable acts.

In these respects The Oresteia is as relevant today as when it was first performed. The modern world is gripped by wars whose origins can be traced back to tit-for-tat blood feuds; disputes that are justified by reference to duty and honour and revenge.

I wonder is this true of business too? Do we sometimes find ourselves caught in a cycle of action and reaction, unable to break out of competitive role-playing, incapable of seeing beyond the injustices of the past?

Sometimes inertia is the most powerful force in any organisation and it is also the most pernicious.

Like a Moth to a Flame

‘Like a moth to a flame
Burned by the fire
My love is blind
Can’t you see my desire?’

Janet Jackson/ That’s The Way Love Goes

Where music is concerned I have a sweet tooth.  I think it’s coming from Essex. I preferred gospel to blues, soul to funk, disco to house, acid jazz to techno. And I had a particular weakness for female soul vocals: for Gladys, Dionne and Diana; for Anita, Randy and Roberta. In my world Aretha was always the Queen, Donna defined disco and Mary J saved hip hop.

And then there was Janet Jackson.

Janet didn’t have the soul of Maxine, the heart of Chaka or the voice of Whitney. And many of her ‘80s recordings haven’t aged well, as they’re scaffolded in Jam and Lewis’ industrial production.

But give Janet a break. She was the tenth of ten children; her father was a tough old patriarch; she was Michael’s sister. Throughout her career she demonstrated admirable independence and an open mind.

And Janet gave us That’s The Way Love Goes, a definitive work for the sweet toothed soul fan. There’s the languorous rhythm, the melodious guitar pattern and Janet’s gentle, soothing serenade; not forgetting the warehouse-set video, where Janet’s hip mates sway diffidently to the beat from the ceiling-high speakers. Not unlike my own arrangement on a Saturday afternoon.

Of course, the central image of That’s The Way Love Goes is the tragic moth bewitched by a flame. I think I understand why people are attracted to doomed love. But I have always wondered: Why are moths attracted to flames? Surely they could evolve out of the suicidal self-immolation thing, given its endless repetition?

It transpires that the world of science is not entirely sure why moths are drawn to flame either. One theory suggests that they confuse fire with luminous female pheromones. Another suggests that it’s a primitive escape reflex gone wrong. But the dominant theory seems to be that the moths mistake artificial light sources for the moon, which is their primary navigational reference point.

It’s a rather sad thought: that your core point of reference, your North Star, is in fact leading you astray, to certain death.

It’s not entirely an alien concept for commerce. Many a business sets its controls for the heart of the profits, its navigation system almost entirely geared around financial returns. Only to find that, when you prioritise profit ahead of people and product, then your profits tend to suffer. It’s the commercial form of doomed love. Intense, sad, misguided, inevitable. ‘Like a moth to a flame, burned by the fire.’

No. 45