John Craxton: The Heroic Hedonist

Still Life Sailors (1980-85) Estate of John Craxton

I recently took the train to Chichester to see an excellent exhibition of the art of John Craxton. (Pallant House Gallery, until 21 April 2024)

Though born and raised in England, Craxton produced much of his work in Greece. There he portrayed an Arcadia of ordinary folk living under a hot sun, amongst olive trees and asphodels, wild cats and frolicking goats. He painted young men smoking in the morning, sleeping in the afternoon and dancing into the night. His art is full of colour, light and movement. It is a joyous celebration of life, and prompts us to consider our own attitudes to work and play.

‘As a child I enjoyed a happy, near-Bohemian home life in a large family.’

Craxton was born in London in 1922. When his father, a pianist and composer, scored his only hit - ‘Mavis,’ sung by the legendary Irish tenor John McCormack - he took his wife and six children down to Selsey on the south coast and bought a shack above the beach.

Craxton had an idyllic childhood.

‘In what now seems like a succession of endless, if not cloudless, summer days, I ran barefoot, rode ponies, shrimped at low tide, collected fossils from the Bracklesham Beds, went to the movies, carried milk from the farm (which still had a working windmill) and had family picnics on the beach.’

Craxton decided as a young boy that all he wanted was to be an artist. He attended various schools, but emerged with no qualifications. A naturally independent spirit, he didn’t fancy the discipline of formal creative training either. And so he was largely self-taught, occasionally dropping into art schools to pick up equipment and a little drawing tuition.

Boy on a Blue Chair, 1946 John Craxton

Having failed an army medical, Craxton was excused war service. Always rather charming, witty and spontaneous, he fell in with various sponsors, lovers and artists, and one patron funded a studio in St John’s Wood that he shared with Lucian Freud.

His early work featured quiet country lanes, twisted trees and dead animals; solitary souls in melancholy, menacing landscapes. During the war years he was given his first solo exhibitions in London, and was commissioned to produce book designs – a line of work that served him well for much of his life.

But Craxton was keen to get away from Britain. As a teenager he had been enchanted by the ancient Greek figurines and pottery he encountered at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Dorset. He aspired to a Mediterranean idyll.

‘The willow trees are nice and amazing here, but I would prefer an olive tree growing out of a Greek ruin.’

John Craxton by Felix H. Man
bromide print, 1940s© estate of Felix H. Man / National Portrait Gallery, London

Immediately after the hostilities ended, there were still strict restrictions on travel. So Craxton and Freud embarked on a painting expedition to the Scilly Isles, and then stowed away on a Breton fishing boat bound for France. They only got as far as Penzance. 

The following year Craxton made it to Zurich, where he met the wife of a British ambassador at dinner. She offered him a lift to Athens in a bomber she had borrowed for a curtain-buying trip. 

And so, aged 23, Craxton arrived in Greece and immediately fell under its spell. He settled first in Poros, and then Crete, and he would stay there, on and off, for the rest of his life.

‘It’s possible to be a real person – real people, real elements, real windows – real sun above all. In a life of reality my imagination really works. I feel like an émigré in London and squashed flat.’

In Greece Craxton created romantic landscapes populated by shepherds, peasants and a pipe-playing Pan. He painted the azure sea and cyan sky; bare footed young men in white cotton trousers and striped tee shirts - working, relaxing, dancing arm-in-arm. His art has vibrant colours and a gentle cubism. And by contrast with his previous work, there’s an exultant spirit, a dreamy languor, a warm conviviality. We meet a rugged herdsman, a smoking butcher, a grey-bearded octopus fisherman. Here are moustached mariners tucking into a meal of seafood and salad at the local taverna. A sign on the wall behind them warns against breaking plates.

‘The most wonderful sound in the world is of people talking over a good meal.’

Craxton was fond of saying that 'Life is more important than art.’ He relished the freedom he had on the Greek islands - to ride his Triumph Trophy motorcycle along dirt roads and mountain tracks; to talk and laugh at the dockside bars, as he drank ouzo and feasted on cuttlefish and calamari; to lead an openly gay life. 

At the time Greece was a more tolerant place than Britain - although Craxton's interest in young men in uniform did prompt the authorities to suspect he was spying. When homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK in 1967, he sent the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, a picture.

As well as painting, Craxton designed book jackets for the travel writer Paddy Leigh Fermor; and created stage sets for Frederick Ashton at the Royal Ballet. But he was not particularly industrious. His friends joked that he suffered from ‘procraxtonation.’

Pastoral for PW John Craxton

Craxton suggests that a creative life need not be fuelled by anxiety and pain. It doesn’t have to be all about struggle and denial. Rather we can choose to follow our dreams; pursue our passions; seek out the sun. 

Craxton, who was made a British honorary consul in Crete, was never concerned by artistic fashion or the opinions of the establishment. He carried on painting in his own individual style into his later years, and he rode his motorbike until nearly 80. When he died aged 87, his ashes were scattered in Chania harbour. 

His biographer Ian Collins described him as ‘a heroic hedonist.’

 
'My life, my life, my life, my life in the sunshine.
Everybody loves the sunshine.
Sunshine, everybody loves the sunshine.
Sunshine, folks get down in the sunshine.
Sunshine, folks get 'round in the sunshine.
Just bees and things and flowers.
My life, my life, my life, my life in the sunshine.
Everybody loves the sunshine.
Feel, what I feel, when I feel, what I feel,
When I'm feeling, in the sunshine.
Do what I do, when I do, what I do,
When I'm doing, in the sunshine.
Sunshine, everybody loves the sunshine.'

Roy Ayers, 'Everybody Loves The Sunshine' 

No. 453

Not Just Teaching, But Learning: Co-Creation with Pam Tanowitz

Everyone Keeps Me by Pam Tanowitz: Anna Rose O’Sullivan, Hannah Grennell and Beatriz Stix-Brunell. © Foteini Christofilopoulou, courtesy the Royal Opera House

‘It’s not just me teaching them. I’m learning from them.’
Pam Tanowitz

I recently attended a talk and rehearsal given by the inspiring New York choreographer Pam Tanowitz. She was creating a work with the Royal Ballet to mark the centenary of legendary American choreographer Merce Cunningham. 

With his clean lines and fast footwork Cunningham made dance that was independent of music, narrative or concept. He collaborated with artists, designers and musicians, and experimented with new technology. He also embraced the possibilities of chance: rehearsing pieces in segments that could be reconfigured just before the show in an order determined by rolling dice or flipping a coin. 

Like Cunningham Tanowitz begins by rehearsing without music. Like Cunningham no step is off limits. She also embraces chance. In a recent work the third movement became the first after it was mixed up on her computer.

Tanowitz explains that her approach is more about task than character; more about structure than story; more about movement than music.

In the piece Tanowitz has created with the Royal Ballet, ‘Everyone Keeps Me,’ dancers twist and turn, hop and spin, shake and judder, wave and salute. Their moves are elegant, but on the edge of awkward. Sequences are consciously dislocated and out of joint. Sometimes they dance together and sometimes alone. Sometimes they stare into each other’s eyes and sometimes they look away. Sometimes they lounge on the floor and regard the action from a distance. 

You may want to see in the dance the ebb and flow of human relationships, the erratic interaction of people’s fortunes. But Tanowitz insists that the meaning is in the movement.

‘The meaning is in the structure, the steps, the dance and the people. I want it to be viscerally compelling.’

Choreographer Pam Tanowitz Photo by Ted Hearne

Tanowitz usually works with her own company, with dancers who are articulate in her distinct grammar and way of working. When she choreographs with a new company, as here, she is keen to make use of the particular physicality and style of movement that fresh dancers bring.

‘The dancers’ personality and technique, the ballet history in their bodies.’

In rehearsing the material Tanowitz takes a phrase, then reverses it, manipulates it, and makes the dancers travel across the floor with it. She explores the many ways in which a sequence can evolve.

‘I like choices. I want to see all the options.’

Tanowitz characterises her process as conversation. They are talking dance.

‘It’s about who’s in the room with me. It’s a conversation between me, the dancers and the audience.’

In the commercial creative sector we could learn a good deal from Tanowitz - about embracing chance, non-sequiturs and abstraction. But I was particularly interested in what she teaches us about co-creation - something we discuss a good deal nowadays.

For Tanowitz co-creation inevitably entails a certain amount of letting go, of giving collaborators room to explore, to experiment, to express themselves. 

‘I’m not interested in micromanagement.’

She is opening herself up to her partners, to their characters and ideas, responding to their particular styles and ways of working. She is actively listening and being attentive, learning and being inspired. Her process is built on dialogue and trust. 

But by no means does Tanowitz concede authorial control. Far from it. Having investigated permutations and possibilities, she then edits, selects and makes choices. She adapts, arranges and assembles. 

Tanowitz reminds us that if we want great output, we need to think seriously about our input.

‘Process is my favourite part. The show is my least favourite.’

Tanowitz seems a smart, articulate, humble person, with a natural rapport with her dancers and a dry sense of humour. She ponders problems of movement like an architect poring over a complex set of plans.

‘I like solving logistical problems artistically.’

At one point in the rehearsal Tanowitz struggles to find the appropriate instruction for two dancers. She hesitates.

‘What’s the word I was looking for?’

The dancers resolve the puzzle intuitively with a new and different movement. Tanowitz turns away, satisfied.

‘Good. I didn’t need the word.’

'Time won't change you.
Money won't change you.
I haven't got the faintest idea.
Everything seems to be up in the air at this time.
I need something to change your mind.’

Talking Heads, ‘Mind’ (D Byrne / J Harrison)

No 255

Kenneth MacMillan: Building from the Highlights

Federico Bonelli and Francesca Hayward, Royal Ballet. Photo: Johan Persson

‘Sex and death. That’s what I do.’

I recently saw an excellent documentary about the choreographer Sir Kenneth MacMillan (BBC 4, ‘Ballet’s Dark Knight’).

Between 1953 and 1992 MacMillan created over sixty ballets for the Royal Ballet and other companies around the world: full-length repertoire classics like ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Manon’ and ‘Mayerling’; shorter gems like ‘The Invitation’, ‘Elite Syncopations’, ‘Requiem’ and ‘Song of the Earth’. His work is characterised by big human themes, psychological insight and dramatic physicality; by high lifts, expressive gestures and raw emotion.

Born to working class parents in 1929, MacMillan grew up in Great Yarmouth. When he was evacuated to Retford in Nottinghamshire during the war, he was introduced to ballet by a local dance teacher. He took to it immediately, and at 15 joined the Sadler’s Wells School. He was subsequently enrolled in the company, but suffered stage fright, and when he was 23 he stopped dancing.

MacMillan turned to choreography.

'I prefer to explore the human psyche. I try to make people sometimes feel uncomfortable in the theatre.’

He set about enlisting classical ballet technique to address contemporary themes. His work explored young love, identity crises, sexual abuse and suicide; corrupt courts, war damage, drugs and depression.

‘I am very interested in people, and I wanted to portray the dilemma of people living and working and being with each other. I wanted to show that kind of thing in ballet.’

Above all MacMillan sought emotional truth and authenticity. He was instinctively at odds with the ballet world of the time; with its glamour and romance, fairytales and fashion.

‘In choreography people were interested in the purely decorative side of ballet. And I was not. Somehow I want ballet to be in touch with reality.’

MacMillan achieved phenomenal career success. He was appointed artistic director of the Royal Ballet, and subsequently became its principal choreographer. In 1983 he was knighted. But he was always an outsider.

‘There is a class system here, an old boy network which I never belonged to. And I’ve always kicked against it and always will.’

Perhaps this outsider status spurred him on to keep challenging conventions and breaking new ground. His work demonstrated a profound sympathy with the desperate and downtrodden.

‘The situation I enjoyed working at best was the individual against society really – the outside figure that has a hard time.’

MacMillan’s story suggests a number of lessons for people working in marketing and communications.

He teaches us to treasure our outsider status - because difference creates difference; and to seek authenticity, even in an environment that is characterised by artifice and contrivance. Sometimes commercial creativity seems to inhabit a landscape of stereotypes, paradigms and puns. Yet, it is always possible to find real feeling, emotional truth and personal resonance - whatever the context.

I was particularly struck by MacMillan’s description of his method for constructing a ballet.

‘There have to be highlights in a ballet. All the highlights are the pas de deux. That’s part of my ethos. When I do a ballet I choreograph the pas de deux first. So I know at what height they are, and then underneath that I do everything else. So that they do become the highlights of the ballet.’

Often our Clients want us to build solutions that reach across fragmented media; that span diverse platforms and address disparate objectives. We can tie ourselves in knots accommodating every consideration and concern; building ecosystems, planning journeys, designing architectures. Or we can sit frozen - paralysed by the complexity - with absolutely no idea where to start.

Whether we are constructing a communication campaign, a user interface or a strategic presentation, MacMillan teaches that we should always start with the highlights: first crack the central theme; solve the biggest conundrum; create the centrepiece - and then design the rest of the solution around it.

This prescribes a core task for leadership: to identify the focal point; the critical priority; the heart of the matter. Leaders must show their teams how to solve problems in sequence.

Throughout his life MacMillan suffered from depression and loneliness. He became dependent on alcohol and tranquilisers, and had a weak heart. On 29 October 1992 he was backstage at the Royal Opera House watching a performance of his ballet, ‘Mayerling’. He collapsed and died. He was 62.

In the BBC documentary the dancer Alessandra Ferri observed:

‘Kenneth choreographed life. And real life. Not in a romantic way, not in a fairytale. Life has some amazing beautiful loves. Normally it has some tragic moments. And it has death. That is part of life. You can’t live life without death, it’s impossible.’

(The Royal Ballet will stage ‘Mayerling’ in October 2018, and English National Ballet will be touring with ‘Manon’ from October 2018 to January 2019.)

No. 192

Dance Lessons

Asphodel Meadows, choreographed by Liam Scarlett

I attended a talk by the top Royal Ballet choreographer and dancer, Liam Scarlett. He is only 26, but he has already choreographed two exceptional ballets for the main stage at Covent Garden. And he still finds time to dance in the company.

Scarlett was discussing how he approached creating his 2011 work, Asphodel Meadows, around a particular piece of music, Poulenc’s Double Piano Concerto. One could be intimidated, he said, by the scale and complexity of the Concerto. Where to start? How to break into the task? Whereas with narrative ballet there is a natural sequencing to follow, with an abstract work there is no obvious entry point. He explained that his own process was first to identify the ‘epicentre’ of the music, its emotional core. He knew that if he could just design the pas de deux around a particular romantic passage in the second movement, everything else would follow. Having got to the emotional heart of the music, he could work outwards to the rest of the piece.

I am often in meetings nowadays when a Client demands an idea that is media neutral, that extends across every channel, region, product and form of engagement. All the colours, in all the sizes.  Such a panoramic demand can be rather intimidating. And I have found that telling the Creative Department we need to cover the walls with ideas is not entirely helpful.

I suspect that, following Scarlett’s lead, the key to cracking this kind of challenge is not to consider it in its totality or in the abstract. Ideas tend to be born in the specific. The key is to find the epicentre of the task, to find its emotional heart.

In the old days, of course, one could assume that the epicentre of any campaign was TV. The answer’s telly, what’s the question? But engagement is no longer so simple and one of the arts of the modern strategist is to provide focus, to set priorities, to isolate the heart of the matter. Do we start with a particular audience, a particular task, a particular medium? Will the visual identity unlock everything? Should we work up from the product or down from the vision? Because even a solution experienced in parallel may have to be arrived at in sequence.

Lauren Cuthbertson in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

I am no expert, but I love ballet. I love the combination of art and athleticism, grace and danger. I love the unexplained relationships, the wordless ideas. And I confess I find its transcendent beauty somewhat soothing at the end of a day discussing brand pyramids, lost mojos and ideation.

Ballet has also made me consider my own approach to work. I recently heard the fantastic Devonian dancer, Lauren Cuthbertson, explain how she rose to the top of her profession. The interviewer asked if she always knew she would be a ballerina. Oh, yes, she said, and despite her sunny demeanour, a steely determination was audible in her voice. She once came to a career crossroads at ballet school when she was challenged over her application in class. She decided that every night after rehearsal she would replay the whole class in her head. She would lie awake in bed retracing every pirouette, every plie, every jete. So she would return to class the next day, having rehearsed the piece twice over. Inevitably her progress accelerated. And Cuthbertson continues to rehearse in her head, every day, everywhere. When she walks to the tube, eats her supper and relaxes in the evening, she is also pacing the stage at Covent Garden, leaping, vaulting, careering. She is always at work.

I hesitate when applying this thought to our own discipline. I have prized my own ability to compartmentalise work, to leave it behind at the end of the day. I encourage others to forget, to live a life beyond advertising. Because a richer life out of work enables a richer contribution in work. And Lord knows we have enough problems with stress in the office without encouraging people to take work home with them.

But it’s also true that I have solved the knottiest problems relaxing at home. Whilst the content of one’s dreams may, for the most part, be meaningless drivel or the output of some primal displacement process, I have occasionally woken up in the middle of the night with a clarity that has eluded me in the day. The brain seems sometimes to leap further and faster when it is unconstrained by conscious thought and a computer screen.

So I have reached a compromise. I endeavour to leave the tedious work worries in the office. The people problems, the deadline demands, the fracas with the photocopier. But I also try to take the more interesting strategic challenges home. Because I suspect our unfocused, unconscious brains may be our most valuable assets.

First published: BBH Labs 15/06/12

No. 14

Subscribe