Angelus Novus

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History IX, 1940

Benjamin is reported to have owned this little Klee drawing and to have carried it around with him, presumably among the notes for his Arcades project, also carried with him on his ultimately futile flight from the Nazis.  I heard that it had disappeared after his suicide.  Klee actually produced a number of similar drawings.  I was disappointed that none of them are included in the numinous Klee exhibition on at the Tate Modern at the moment.

The East End of London in the post-war period

Flower-seller, E1, 1959 (John Claridge)

From another wonderful post by the 'Gentle Author' of the Spitalfields Life blog, here are some of the photographs of John Claridge, whose work obviously deserves to be better known.  There are more pictures on Spitalfields Life at http://spitalfieldslife.com/2012/02/19/john-claridges-east-end/

Crane and seagull, E16, 1960 (John Claridge)

Mass X Ray, E14, 1966 (John Claridge)

At the window, E1, 1963 (John Claridge)



The great danger with photographs is that they have a tendency to romanticize the past (though strictly speaking this tendency is in our reading of them rather than inherent in the photographs themselves).  Claridge's pictures, especially those of East End people, of which he was one, resist this danger. 

Because of a coincidence of timing, it is interesting to compare them to the visual values of the recent television series about midwives working in Poplar just after the war, which I very much enjoyed and was at times moved by.  The series was set in 1957, and was based on Call the Midwife (London: Merton Books 2002), the diaries of Jennifer Worth.  The TV series, written by Heidi Thomas, probably does romanticize the East End in visual terms: the main characters in it are the nurses themselves, the nuns they live with, and the local doctor and policeman.  Other local people only really appear as extras, or as those whose experiences of childbirth provide the focus, usually just for one episode, of the midwives' work.  Poplar looks a little too neat and tidy, there is no fog, and buildings are only falling down as a  result of bomb damage.  This isn't to criticize the series too much: some of these incidental characters' stories were very harrowing.  But its overall mood, as I read it at least, was one of hope and positive social change: one of the most important jobs for midwives and other care-sector workers (they would never have referred to themselves in this way!) at this time was to convince many people that the National Health Service really was for them.  One of the most touching stories was about a woman who had a slight deformity in her hips and had had 3 stillborn children as a result: with the help of a relatively straightforward procedure for the first time available to her at the London Hospital she was finally able to have a healthy child.

Claridge's wonderful pictures are different: they appear, they do not speak.  If they have a message, it is anything but clear.  The past is just the past, it is indeed 'another country': we have both gained and lost in leaving it behind.

The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman 2

I was with two friends from outside London, who were looking for an interesting exhibition to go to, so I ended up going to see the Grayson Perry again!  This was a great thing to do - it's the sort of show where you notice different things if you go more than once.  Once again I took rather random notes about anything that struck me, and here they are (quotes from GP in italics):

Do not look too hard for meaning here, I am not a historian, I am an artist, that's all you need to know.

Deep in the mountains of my mind there is a sacred place where there is a monument to skill

Journeys as pilgrimages

Early English motorcycle helmet: title of a GP piece that looks like something vaguely Viking from 1200 years ago that's just been excavated, displayed next to the helmet GP made for his trip round Europe with Alan Measles.

If Alan measles had been around in ancient Egypt he would have hung out with Bes.

A walk in Bloomsbury, an encounter with the world: 'the journey has become a tired metaphor of reality television, describing a transformative experience.'

Ritual can become stultified if not kept relevant to its time and context

Shrines - in your pocket, in a corner of your house, or by a roadside, portable.

I can make art with hardly any money and on the kitchen table
A forge for turning old people into young, Russian print 1800

Fallen giant - cf Jerusalem, I wanted to make something that was about England

The Rosetta vase, yellow, covered with incantations (see picture in my earlier post)

Boli or power figure, from Mali, raw potency, pared down, apparently modern

Everything in the BM was contemporary once. The frivolous now, companion to Rosetta. I wanted it to have the look of a mystical diagram whilst the content consisted of banalities and buzzwords of Feb 2011.

Hello kitty hand towel pilgrimage souvenir

We trust maps. I like maps of feelings, beliefs and the irrational, they use our trust of maps to persuade us that there might be some truth in their beauty.

The wheel of life Tibet 1900. A map and self-help chart combined

Map of truths and beliefs. The entire landscape is a graveyard

Pilgrims travel light so the souvenir may be only a badge, a photo or a signature.



Map based on Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress. 1800.

Confucius

Votive stupas

Our father and mother - pilgrims made of iron

Tate Modern is the cathedral of the cult of modern art.

Relics

The chevalier d'Eon de Beaumont, 1728 - 1810.  French diplomat, spy, soldier and Freemason whose first 49 years were spent as a man, and whose last 33 years were spent as a woman. Died in England, buried in St Pancras churchyard.

Journeyman cabinet maker carrying the tools of his trade

Sheela-na-gig. PJ Harvey album of the same name

 
Do go and see this exhibition, whatever your craft, it's been extended for another month until February 26th.

This is the link to the British Museum teaser about the show: http://bri.mu/r0v6jH

Here's a link to the notes I took on my first visit to the exhibition: http://jayoptimistic.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/grayson-perry-exhibition-tomb-of.html

Binge drinking, a great British tradition

A brilliant 18th century primary historical document collected by Prospect magazine:

Thomas Turner, a grocer in Sussex, writes in his diary, 22nd February 1758:

'About four pm I walked down to Whyly. We played at Bragg the first part of the even. After ten we went to supper on four boiled chicken, four boiled ducks, minced veal, sausages, cold roast goose, chicken pasty and ham. Our company, Mr and Mrs Porter, Mr and Mrs Coates, Mrs Atkins, Mrs Hicks, Mr Piper and wife, Joseph Fuller and wife, Tho Fuller and wife, Dame Durrant, myself and wife and Mr French's family. After supper our behaviour was far from that of serious harmless mirth; it was downright obstreperous, mixed with a great deal of folly and stupidity. Our diversion was dancing, or jumping about, without a violin or any music, singing of foolish healths, and drinking all the time as fast as it could well be poured down; and the parson of the parish was one of the mized multitude....About three o'clock, finding myself to have as much liquor as would do me good, I slept away unobserved, leaving my wife to make my excuse...

This morning about six just as my wife was got to bed, we was awaked by Mrs Porter. My wife found Mr Porter (the parson), Mr Fuller and his wife, with a lighted candle, and part of a bottle of wine and a glass. The next thing was to have me downstairs, which being apprised of, I fastened my door. Upstairs they came and threatened to break it open, so I ordered my boys to open it, when they poured into my room. Their immodesty permitted them to draw me out of bed, as the common phrase is, topsy-turvy. Instead of my upper clothes, they gave me time to put on my wife's petticoat; and in this manner they made me dance, without shoes or stockings, until they had emptied the bottle of wine and also a bottle of beer.'

This is the kind of material that should be used much more in history lessons.

More historical documents of excess in the pipeline, suggestions welcome.

Topics for imminent posts

• The past is orange: if William of Orange had not died childless, would the UK and Holland now be one country?

• Private schools: the most important way to reduce class-based unequal outcomes in schools is to abolish private education. So argued an articulate working class teenage girl from Kirby, Lancashire, last week on John Humphreys' documentary.

• In a keynote speech during his visit to the UK last week, the Pope asserted that 'morality is founded on religious belief': most commentators failed to question this. Do you have to believe in a God to lead a good life?

• Incentive payments to achieve targets can actually make results worse: see a recent animated lecture on the RSA website.

• 'Most people can do most jobs' (Richard Sennett): talent is not scarce, and we need our education and training systems to stop operating as if it is.