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

Still from Lights of New York

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No one remembers who came in second.’

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

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

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

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

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

No. 398

Selling the Alphabet: How Sesame Street Applied Commercial Techniques to Achieve a Social Good

'Sunny Day
Sweepin' the clouds away.
On my way to where the air is sweet.
Can you tell me how to get,
How to get to Sesame Street?’
‘Sesame Street Theme’ (J Raposo / J Stone / B Hart)

I recently watched a fine documentary about the children's television series Sesame Street. (‘Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street’, 2021, directed by Marilyn Agrelo) 

Combining live-action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry, Sesame Street has been both entertaining and educating kids on PBS since 1969. It was the first pre-school educational show to base its content on research and to involve collaboration between producers, writers, educators and analysts. From the outset the series sought to apply commercial techniques to achieve a social good.

1. ‘A Brilliantly Simple Notion’

‘The people who control the system read. And the people who make it in the system read.’
Joan Coonie

Sesame Street began with a problem.  In the mid ‘60s Lloyd Morrisett, a psychologist and vice president at the Carnegie Foundation, was troubled by the poor educational performance of low income, inner city children.

‘We found that those children who had entered school 3 months behind, by the end of the first grade they’d be a year behind, and get farther and farther behind. And I wondered whether there was a possibility that television could be used to help children with school. But television was not very popular with the Carnegie staff. Academics were not interested in television. They did not have it in their homes.’
Lloyd Morrisett

In 1966, at a dinner party in Gramercy Park, New York, Morrisett discussed the issue of pre-school education with his host, television producer Joan Coonie.

‘I knew the answer. I knew the answer right away. Every child in America was singing beer commercials. Now where had they learned beer commercials?...So to me it was clear. The kids just adored the medium. So why not see if it could educate them?’
Joan Coonie

Coonie and Morrisett set about assembling the team that would become the Children's Television Workshop (CTW). A critical early recruit was experienced writer and director of children’s television, Jon Stone.

‘Joan had a brilliantly simple notion. Children are watching a tremendous amount of television. If they’re going to watch that much television, why not: 1. Find out what it is they like to watch? 2 Find out what would be good for them to watch? And then put the two together and that’s the show.’
Jon Stone

The original cast of Sesame Street in set, 1969

2. Extensive R&D

The initiative secured funding from government and private foundations, and there followed two years of research and development. Coonie had to overcome initial scepticism about her leadership.

‘Someone said it won’t be taken seriously if a woman heads it. But the problem is they didn’t have a project without me. Much of it was in my head. Which I pointed out to them.’
Joan Coonie

The CTW researchers established that, in order to attract and retain young people’s attention, an educational show would need a strong visual style, repetition, fast-moving action, humour, music, animation and short films. They drew up a detailed curriculum, and in a comprehensive Writer's Notebook outlined communication goals without specifying characters or contexts. They decided that it would be easier to teach writers how to interpret the curriculum than to teach educators how to write comedy.

‘They told me that we had to incorporate all this education into this show. I was convinced that it would be impossible to do. I’d never written anything like this before. But nobody had written anything like this before.’
Jon Stone

Joan Coonie © Sesame Workshop

3. Creative Execution

Stone decided to set the show in an inner city environment, and chose the name Sesame Street to suggest the magic of ‘Open Sesame!’

‘I wanted to capture that New York energy, because to the three-year-old cooped up in the room upstairs, the action is on the street.’
Jon Stone

Stone created a group of characters to inhabit Sesame Street. There was Gordon, a high school science teacher and his wife Susan, a nurse; Mr Hooper, the proprietor of the corner store; Bob the music teacher; and Maria and Luis who ran the Fix-It Shop. The actors cast in these roles were ethnically diverse to reflect the core target audience. 

‘When you’re growing up and you don’t see yourself in the media, then you get the feeling that you don’t exist. And that’s when you start thinking that you’re not part of this society – of this culture.’ 
Sonia Manzano (Maria)

Another key component of Sesame Street was the music, much of which was composed by Joe Raposo. He contributed classic numbers like ‘I’m an Aardvark’ and ‘Over, Under, Around and Through,’ and guests included the likes of BB King, Stevie Wonder, Johnnie Cash, Paul Simon and Dizzy Gillespie.

'Now what starts with the letter C?
Cookie starts with C.
Let's think of other things
That starts with C.
Oh, who cares about the other things?
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
C is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C.’
'’C’ Is For Cookie’ (J Raposo)

Critically Stone also signed up puppeteer Jim Henson, whose Muppets had been appearing on late night TV comedies and adverts.

‘When I first heard about it from Jon, I loved the idea of it - the whole idea of taking commercial techniques and applying them to a show for kids.’
Jim Henson

Henson populated the show with his distinctive puppets: cute and lovable Grover; Cookie Monster with his voracious appetite; Kermit, the soft spoken everyman frog and occasional news reporter; Bert and Ernie, friends with totally different perspectives.

Richard Hunt, Jim Henson, and Frank Oz on the set of Sesame Street

4. Test and Learn

At first the show’s street scenes did not contain Muppets, for fear that interaction with real actors would confuse the young audience. But researchers tested trial programmes, using a slide projector as a ‘Distractor,’ and they found that kids paid more attention during the Muppet segments. And so Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch were introduced to the live-action sequences. 

Oscar, the green grumpy character who lived in a trashcan, was crafted to represent the more challenging encounters that kids experience in daily life.

‘Oscar’s the dark side of everybody. He’s what children are constantly told they must not do. Don’t say that, it’s bad. Don’t do that. Don’t talk back.’
Jon Stone

Big Bird, bright yellow and eight feet tall, was initially conceived as just a dumb goofy guy. But he was adapted to be a peer for the audience.

‘I think I should play him as a child who’s just learning and doesn’t know a lot of things yet.’
Caroll Spinney (Puppeteer)

Experiences such as these fed into what became the CTW Model: collaborative planning; a detailed curriculum; developmental research; measurement and response.

CTW’s analysts established that children liked seeing other children on TV. And so Sesame Street featured ordinary kids, not child actors, whose unscripted interactions with the core characters became hugely popular.

The researchers also discovered that, when adults co-viewed the show with their children, learning was enhanced through the conversation that went on during and after. And so the writers deliberately scripted more sophisticated gags, cultural references and guest appearances that would appeal to an older audience.

'When I find I can't remember
What comes after
A and before C.
My mother always whispers
letter B.
Letter B, letter B, letter B, letter B
She whispers buh-buh-buh means letter B.’
‘Letter B’ (C Cerf)

Jon Stone with Ernie and Cookie Monster

5. Keep Evolving

Supported by innovative local marketing programs to win the interest of target communities, Sesame Street premiered in November 1969. It was an immediate hit.

‘When it went on-air the phone started ringing off the wall. No one had ever seen anything like it.’
Joan Coonie

Within a few series the show became something of a cultural phenomenon.

‘I think Sesame Street is the greatest thing that ever happened in television.’
Orson Welles

‘My little daughter watches it and she’s getting so smart. She knows everything about it.’
Muhammad Ali

Of course, there were challenges. At its launch the state commission in Mississippi voted not to air the show. Coonie was steadfast in its defence.

‘There’s no question that we are integrated and we reflect to some degree inner city – I would say Black inner city – life. And we’re very proud of that. I mean, if that’s our worst sin, I’m happy to be a sinner.’
Joan Coonie 

The early programs were also criticised for being over-stimulating; for their representation of women and Latinx characters. When a specifically African American Muppet was introduced, some from the community complained of stereotyping.

The show took such objections onboard, and continued with its model of test and learn. It adapted and evolved with changing times and circumstances.

In 1982 the production team had to respond to the death of Will Lee, who had played Mr Hooper since its inception. They determined that, since kids do sometimes encounter mortality, then the show too should find a way of dealing with it: confirming that Mr Hooper was not coming back; but making it alright to feel sad.

‘If we’ve been trying to be truthful, why should we short-change kids now?’
Sonia Manzano (Maria)

Sesame Street is one of the longest-running shows in the world. By its 50th anniversary in 2019, it had produced over 4,500 episodes, two feature-length movies, 35 TV specials and 180 albums. Its YouTube channel has almost five million subscribers. Some 86 million Americans have watched it as children. 

Sesame Street is also one of the most studied and monitored shows in television history. Consistent patterns of data collected over 30 years indicate that the program has had significant positive effects for its viewers across a broad range of subject areas.

The story of Sesame Street should be an inspiration to anyone working in business. It encourages us to reflect on the opportunities to employ commercial techniques to create positive social change. Yes, we can.

‘Sesame Street wanted to give kids tools to create the world they wanted to live in.’
Sonia Manzano (Maria)

'It's not that easy bein’ green.
Having to spend each day
The color of the leaves.
When I think it could be nicer
Bein' red or yellow or gold,
Or something much more colorful like that.

But green's the color of spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like.
And green can be big like an ocean
Or important like a mountain or tall like a tree.

When green is all there is to be,
It could make you wonder why.
But why wonder, why wonder?
I am green and it'll do fine.
It's beautiful and I think it's what I wanna be.'
Kermit, ‘Bein’ Green’ (J Raposo)

No. 389

Glyn Philpot: It’s Never Too Late to ‘Go Picasso’

‘Acrobats Waiting to Rehearse’ Glyn Philpot

Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton

I recently visited a fine exhibition of the work of artist Glyn Philpot. (‘Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit' is at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester until 23 October.)

Philpot was a successful society portraitist who, at the age of 46, shook off convention to embrace modernism. He was a model of mid-life reinvention.

Born in Clapham in 1884, the son of a surveyor, Philpot grew up in Herne in Kent. Having studied at the Lambeth School of Art and the Académie Julian in Paris, he first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1904. 

Philpot painted the elite of his day: aristocrats, ambassadors and actors. He had a talent for making his subjects look rather elegant and refined, beautifully dressed and coolly composed. His style was influenced by the Spanish and Italian Old Masters, whom he greatly admired. 

‘I am not one of those who think we should begin by striking out methods of our own. I feel that is a gift which only comes afterwards – if it comes at all.’

Mrs Henry Mond by Glyn Philpot (1884-1937)

In 1923 Philpot was elected the youngest Royal Academician of his generation. And by the end of the ‘20s his endeavours had earned him a grand London studio on fashionable Tite Street, a chauffeur-driven car and a country house in Sussex. 

Philpot could afford to travel to France, Italy, America and North Africa, and to explore other artistic avenues beyond professional portraiture. He painted classical and biblical images; scenes from the street, the theatre and the circus. And, exceptionally for an artist at that time, he painted sensitive studies of Black subjects, never characterising his sitters as either stereotypical or subservient. 

Perhaps, as he approached his mid-40s, Philpot felt he needed a change.

In 1930 he served on a panel judging an art competition in Pittsburgh that awarded the Gold Medal to Pablo Picasso for his ‘Portrait of Olga.’

On his return from America Philpot hired a studio in Montparnasse, Paris and furnished it with chrome Bauhaus furniture. He set aside the rich colours and traditional glazes that had characterised his work to-date. Employing a cool, dry colour palette, his brushwork became loose and light, sparse and spare. He was a convert to modernism.

‘I am evolving a new way of painting to meet the new things I want to do.’

Philpot gave up the lucrative society portraiture that had made his name. Instead he embraced a broader range of subjects and themes. 

Henry Thomas, Glyn Philpot (1884–1937). Pallant House Gallery

In a mood of mystical calm, two muses stand at the tomb of a poet. A doorman, dressed smartly in red coat and white top hat, ushers his customers into the nightclub with a sideways glance. A Jamaican man sits in profile, like a Florentine prince, against a batik backcloth. A group of women in Marrakech, wrapped in their big burnous cloaks, blend into the blue and pink background - almost abstract shapes. Two male acrobats waiting to rehearse, one with his arms folded, regard us in silence.

The critics of the time, confused by Philpot’s change of direction, thought it a serious mistake. The Guardian observed that: ‘a studio in Paris among the wild men of art is disturbing to an Old-masterish painter.’  A 1932 review of a Philpot exhibition in The Scotsman was headlined:

‘Glyn Philpot ‘goes Picasso’.’

Group of Women, Marrakech. Glyn Philpot (1884–1937). Jerwood Collection

Sadly Philpot’s modernist phase did not last long. He died from a stroke in 1937. He was just 53. 

As tastes evolved and his celebrated sitters receded into history, Philpot lapsed into obscurity. Only decades later did the art establishment reappraise his work and recognise him as a key figure in British modernism.

Philpot teaches us that, whatever age we are, wherever we are in our career - if we are open to stimulus and alert to inspiration - we can still adjust our style and transform our output. We can ‘go Picasso.’ 

It’s never too late to change.

'It's never too late
For rainbows to shine,
For whispering violins
And bubbles in the wine.
Let your heart stay young and strong.
Just one note can start a song.
So don't worry about how long
You've had to wait.
It's never too late.
It's never too late.’
Tony Bennett, ‘Never Too Late’ (R Evans / J Livingston / D Rose)

No. 385

Beg, Steal or Borrow: Ingres and Picasso on Imitation and Inspiration

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 'Madame Moitessier'

'You can’t steal a gift. Bird [Charlie Parker] gave the world his music, and if you can hear it, you can have it.'
Dizzy Gillespie

I recently attended a very small exhibition. 

‘Picasso Ingres: Face to Face’ at the National Gallery, London (until 9 October) comprises just two paintings: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ 1856 portrait of Madame Moitessier, and Pablo Picasso’s 1932 work, ‘Woman with a Book.’ 

These two great portraits share the same pose and composition. But they are radically different. Seeing them together, side-by-side, one gets the opportunity to consider the issues of imitation and inspiration.

‘Who is there, among the greats, who has not imitated? Nothing is made with nothing…’
Ingres

Ingres accepted the commission to paint Ines Moitessier, the young wife of a wealthy banker in 1844. But it took him 12 years to finish it. Work was delayed by the sitter having a baby and the artist losing his spouse. He also hesitated over the best pose and the most appropriate gown.

Eventually Ingres, a devoted classicist, settled on a composition inspired by a Roman fresco from Heraculaneum: it depicted the goddess Arcadia seated with her head propped on one hand.

Roman fresco from Heraculaneum, Hercules finding his son, Telephos

Madame Moitessier regards us with a finger of her right hand resting casually on her temple. She sits on a red satin chair and wears a dress of white Lyon silk, patterned with fragile flowers, decorated with bows and brocade. Her skin is pale as alabaster, though there is a slight rosy glow on her cheeks. Her expression is sensitive, serene, imperious and knowing. She is confident in her position in society, her rank confirmed by the expensive jewels pinned to her frock and hanging from her neck and wrist; by the Chinese porcelain and silk fan in the background. There is a mirror positioned behind her and we see her profile in reflection. It is if we can glimpse her interior as well as her exterior self.

Picasso saw Ingres’s painting of Madame Moitessier in Paris in 1921, when it was put on public display for the first time. It must have left an abiding impression. When, over 10 years later, he embarked on a portrait of his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, he asked her to adopt the same pose as Madame Moitessier.

As in Ingres’ portrait, Walter sits with her right arm resting on a chair, her hand splayed at the side of her head and a finger to her temple. And there is a blush on her cheeks. But there are also dramatic differences between the images. Where Ingres’ work is flawlessly realistic, finely detailed and smoothly finished, Picasso employs avant-garde cubist techniques and applies his paint in thick daubs of bold colours. Walter’s dress is reduced to flattened panels of vivid blue and white with a pinwheel pattern, and she holds an open book rather than a fan. Her face is seen both in profile and front view, her skin and hair are mostly green, and her breasts are exposed. There is a mirror behind the sitter, but in this instance the identity of the figure in profile is unclear. Could it be the artist himself?

The two paintings prompt us to reflect on creative inspiration. 

As Ingres was inspired by an ancient Roman fresco, so Picasso was inspired by a portrait he once saw at an exhibition. Both artists borrowed elements of pose, setting and composition. But both also made significant departures from the source material, making their work very much their own. Each painting echoed the other without copying it.

Pablo Picasso, ‘Woman with a Book’

Many years ago, when I was quite young in the business, a Creative Director explained to me that he approached every brief by thumbing through old D&AD annuals. He would randomly search for sparks and stimulus from historic award winners. At the time I thought this a rather derivative, and perhaps even cynical, approach. It suggested that every task had been set before, and every solution had already been written. 

'If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.'
Wilson Mizner

Perhaps I was wrong. Ideas need catalysts. We must open ourselves up to prompts and provocations from all manner of sources. And then we must take a leap.

When considering this theme, Apple founder Steve Jobs often quoted Picasso: 

‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’

However, it transpires that this thought derived, not from the great Spanish artist, but from a great Anglo-American poet:

‘Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.’
TS Eliot

Maybe it doesn’t matter whose idea it was. As the French film director Jean-Luc Godard observed:

'It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.'

'I look at you and I see
What I've been looking for.
Now it's very clear to me
We should be together.
You make me feel I could reach
For the impossible.
And knowing how much you care,
I'll be there forever.
You know I'll beg,
Steal or borrow,
To give you sunny days.
And in a hundred ways
I'll bring you love.’
The New Seekers, ‘Beg, Steal or Borrow’ (T Cole, S Wolfe and G Hall)

No. 382

Stage Struck Sickert: ‘Our History is of Today’

Walter Richard Sickert - Minnie Cunningham at the Old Bedford. 1892

I recently visited a fine exhibition of the work of Walter Sickert. (Tate Britain, London until 18 September.)

Over a six-decade career, Sickert painted enigmatic self-portraits, beautifully lit street scenes and grim nudes. He distilled on canvas the magic of the music halls, the majesty of Venetian architecture and the melancholy of everyday domestic dramas. He was a key figure in the modernising of British art, importing avant-garde techniques from France and introducing gritty realism. And he kept experimenting, even in later life.

'The artist is he who can take something ordinary and wring out of it attar of roses.'

I was particularly struck by Sickert’s paintings of Victorian music halls.

There were over 300 music halls in London in the late nineteenth century. They put on performances by singers, dancers, acrobats and comedians. These were raucous, rowdy venues, melting pots of character and class. 

The son of a Danish artist, Sickert was born in Munich in 1860 and grew up in London. His English mother was musical, his grandmother had been a performer at the Princess in Shoreditch, and from a young age he was described as ‘stage struck.’ When he left school at 18 he sought work as an actor and appeared in a number of minor theatrical roles before joining the Slade School of Fine Art in 1881.

'To justify our likes and dislikes, we generally say that the work we dislike is not serious.’

Sickert visited a music hall nearly every night, making discrete sketches of audiences, artists and architecture. Inspired by Degas’s pictures of Parisian café-concerts, he set his work at Gatti’s in Hungerford and Sam Collins’s on Islington Green. And his favourite location was the Bedford in Camden, an intimate venue entered through a narrow alleyway.

Sickert painted the view of the stage from the orchestra pit; the interplay between audience and performer; the large mirrors, elaborate plasterwork and gilded ornaments. He explored complex angles and perspectives, distinctive gestures and reflections. Here we see a claque of fans, mouths agape, in awe of their heroine. Here are the Sisters Lloyd in elegant lace gowns, Minnie Cunningham all aglow in a bright red dress and hat. And Little Dot Hetherington, alone in the spotlight, pointing up at the boys in the gallery. They lean forward, peering through the grate, lost in their own private reveries. 

Walter Sickert Little Dot Hetherington at the Bedford Music Hall 1888–89

'The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking now at me.
There he is, can't you see, waving his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.’
'The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery’ (G Ware)

Sickert was criticised at the time for choosing commonplace, tawdry subjects. But he was committed to representing the drama of contemporary life.

‘We don’t go back to other days, our history is of today.’

Sickert took his enthusiasm for the theatrical beyond the music halls. He made a display of Easter bonnets at Dawsons’ Department Store look like a stage set.  He suggested that the baccarat players at the casino in Dieppe were enacting a tragic scene. 

'I am the only one who will make any money in this room.'

Walter Sickert: Noctes Ambrosianae (1906)

In 1915 Sickert painted red-suited Pierrots performing on Brighton Beach. It’s a rather sad sight. Do the empty deckchairs call to mind the absent soldiers fighting across the channel?  

Sickert often used the titles of his pictures to suggest narratives. 

A whiskered fellow takes a puff on his cigar as his wife stares disconsolately at the wall. The picture is called ‘Ennui,’ and to press home the theme of a troubled marriage, there’s a bell jar on the sideboard containing stuffed birds. A man turns away from his seated wife and makes for the door. He’s ‘Off to the Pub.’

'It is said that we are a great literary nation, but we really don’t care about literature. We like films and we like a good murder.’

Sometimes Sickert clearly wanted to toy with the viewer’s imagination.

A clothed man sits in a claustrophobic room, on an iron-framed bed, his head down, his hands clasped. Beside him is the naked figure of a woman, turned away from us. The picture was first titled ‘The Camden Town Murder,’ referring to an actual event of 1907. But the artist subsequently retitled the work: ‘What Shall We Do for the Rent?’ What’s he up to here? Are we witnesses to a scene of financial desperation, or to a hideous crime?

Walter Sickert, The Camden Town Murder or What Shall We Do for the Rent?

'Pictures, like streets and persons, have to have names to distinguish them. But their names are not definitions of them, or, indeed, anything but the loosest kind of labels.'

Perhaps Sickert was still at heart an actor, revelling in role-playing and ambiguity.

'Never believe what an artist says, only what he does.'

In the 1930s Sickert used black and white newspaper photos as visual references for paintings of dramatic events. 

Reporters huddle in the rain to greet the arrival of Emilia Earhart after her solo crossing of the Atlantic. King Edward VIII steps purposefully from his limousine, a busby held protectively in front of him. A miner released from a lengthy underground strike kisses his wife with gusto.

'That picture gives you the right feeling, doesn’t it?'

Walter Sickert, The Miner

Although this was late in his career, Sickert was alert to new possibilities. He recognised the spontaneity of the snap-shot; the power of the camera to capture the fleeting moment. His use of photography is quite extraordinary, foreshadowing Warhol, Bacon and Richter. 

'Photography, like alcohol, should only be allowed to those who can do without it.'

Throughout his long career Sickert consistently shone a revealing spotlight on small but significant events and moments; gestures and relationships. Though he remained a mysterious figure, he taught us a great deal: to see drama in the everyday; to elevate the ordinary; to amplify truth.

‘The most fruitful course of study lies in a persistent effort to render the magic and poetry which [artists] daily see around them.’

’Now I never was a one to go and stint myself.
Cos if I like a thing, I like it, that's enough.
But there's lots of people say that if you like a thing a lot,
It'll grow on you and all that sort of stuff.
Now I like my drop of stout as well as anyone,
Although stout you know is supposed to make you fat,
And there's many a lar-di-dar-di madam wouldn't dare to touch it.
'Cos she mustn't spoil her figure, silly cat.
I always hold in having it if you fancy it.
If you fancy it, that's understood,
And suppose it makes you fat?
I don't worry over that.
A little of what you fancy does you good.’
'A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good’ (G Arthurs, F Leigh)

No. 381

On the Ethics of Folk Music: The Quest for Simple, Not Simplistic, Solutions

Simon Robson (Cecil SHarp) & Mariam Haque (Louie Hooper) Photo by Robert Day

‘Young women they swim like ducks in the water.
Young women they swim like ducks in the water.
If I were a young man I soon would swim after.’
‘Hares on the Mountain’ (collected from Louie Hooper)

I recently attended a performance of ‘Folk’ at the Hampstead Theatre, London (until 6 August). This fine play, written by Nell Leyshon, explores the ethical issues around the collection of folk songs in England in the early twentieth century.

Louie: They’re my mother’s songs. They ain’t your songs.
Sharp: They’re folk songs. They belong to all of us.

Leyshon focuses the drama on a series of encounters between composer Cecil Sharp and impoverished glove-maker Louie Hooper. Sharp, who runs a music school in London, visits Louie’s Somerset village of Hambridge in search of folk songs. He is on a mission to preserve traditional English music, which he fears will be lost forever as industrialisation sweeps away agrarian culture.  

Sharp: People learn them while they work in the fields. But now the machines are taking over… They’ll plough the fields and harvest the corn. And once they take over, there won’t be any singing. These fields will fall silent.

Sharp also seeks to challenge the belief, widely held in academic circles, that England has never had a music of its own. It is known on the continent as ‘das land ohne musik’ - the land without music. 

Cecil Sharp Photograph by Arnold Genthe

Sharp: I’ll prove we have our own music and one day people will see that I saved them.

Louie has found temporary work at the vicarage where Sharp is staying. When he hears one of the many melodies she has learned from her mother, he is hugely impressed.

Sharp: That song… You can’t imagine, but I didn’t even know it existed. And not just me. Nobody knew it existed.

Sharp believes Louie will be a particularly valuable source in his endeavour.

Sharp: The thing about you, Louie, is that you don’t know what it is that you know.

In his conversations with Louie, Sharp makes observations on the genesis of folk songs. Since they are orally transmitted and remembered by heart, they tend to comprise short verses and simple choruses. They also develop and change as they are passed from one singer to another.

After his first meeting with Louie, Sharp has to return to London, but he resolves to return for more material.

Sharp: I have to come back and completely empty you out of songs. I shall hold you upside down and shake you till every song has fallen out.

‘Said I: Pretty maid, shall I go with you
In the meadows to gather some may?
She answered: O no, sir, my pathway is here.
Any other would lead me astray.’
‘As I Walked Through the Meadows’ (collected from Louie Hooper)

Louie Hooper

When Sharp arrives back in Hambridge, he presents Louie with a signed copy of his first compendium of traditional ballads, including those that he has collected from her: ‘Folk Songs from Somerset by Cecil J Sharp.’

Sharp: I’ve signed this one for you. For Louie Hooper. ‘Exchange is no robbery.’ It is a fair exchange, isn’t it, Louie? Your songs for this book.

At this point Louie becomes uncomfortable with Sharp’s enterprise. His publication doesn’t give due credit or recompense. It fixes a particular version of each song, denying it further interpretation or evolution.

Louie: In my world the songs change. When different singers do them. Each of us have our own song. Now you’ve done that, they can’t change. Now you’ve pinned them down so tight there’s no room for them to breathe. They’ll always be what you’ve written down.

Worse still, in transcribing the folk songs for a broad base of pianists and singers, Sharp has stripped them of their beats and trills. He has in effect ‘tidied’ them up.

Louie: But that ain’t what I sung to you. It didn’t sound like that.
Sharp: Look, you have to understand that I had to make it so that anyone could play it. And sing it.

As an audience we get to compare the wonderful mournful complexity of the originals with Sharp’s rather ponderous versions. Louie has a point.

Louie: You only see what you want to see. You make everything too simple.

There’s a lesson here for anyone working in the business of marketing and communication. We too deal in distillation and reduction. We must be careful that, in the process of definition, we do not deny brands the opportunity to modulate and mutate; and that, in removing the extraneous and unnecessary, we do not also lose nuance and texture, beats and trills. We should seek simple, not simplistic, solutions. 

There’s no doubt that Sharp did us all a service in preserving a musical heritage that would otherwise have been lost. But he was an arrogant and prejudiced man, and his endeavour came at a price. As Louie points out, he had no right to speak for England.

Louie: You come here thinking you know what England is. You don’t. It’s all more complicated and more changing and more strange than you reckon.

‘Oh where have you been, Rendal, my son?
Oh where have you been, my sweet pretty one?
I’ve been to my sweetheart! Oh make my bed soon,
I’m sick to my heart, and fain would lay down.’
‘Lord Rendal’ (collected from Louie Hooper)

No. 379

Cornelia Parker’s ‘Sympathetic Magic’: A Different View of Creative Destruction

Cornelia Parker, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View 1991 Tate © Cornelia Parker

'When I was a kid, my mother used to say, 'You always want to be different.' I couldn't work out what she meant. I was just trying to be myself.'
Cornelia Parker

I recently visited an excellent retrospective of the work of British artist Cornelia Parker. (Tate Britain, London until 16 October.)

'If people say, 'You can't do that,' you can be sure I will do my utmost to do it.'

The exhibition brings together almost 100 works from the last 35 years. Parker finds, collects and assembles objects. She pulverises, crushes, cuts and burns them; stretches, spills, drops and explodes them – ‘making, unmaking and remaking.’ She prompts us to reflect on the meaning we attach to things; the melancholy of missed opportunities and the ever-present menace of violence in our society; the true value of creative destruction.

The Negative of Words

'I feel our relationship to life, to the rest of the world, is very tenuous. It feels fleeting.’

Sometimes Parker considers absences. The delicate shavings collected by a silversmith from hand-engraved inscriptions suggest unspoken words. The fine black lacquer residue left over from records cut at Abbey Road Studios evokes unheard songs. The cracks between cemetery paving slabs, cast in dark bronze, prompt a sense of danger. You better watch your step. 

'I think my work is like a spiral: you keep coming back on yourself, but you're at a different place.'

The work can be quite haunting.

As you wander around an array of crushed brass instruments hung in a circular space, you notice the shadows thown against white walls. Parker intends the piece to bring to mind ‘a mute marching band, frozen breathlessly in limbo.’ As you walk through a big tent made from the red material left behind after Remembrance Day poppies have been cut away, you are inevitably prompted to think of wasted lives. 

'I think your subconscious knows far more than your conscious, so I trust it.’

Parker presents us with objects that have a problematic future - the steel that will become a Colt 45, the blank discs that will become coins – and with materials that have a grim past. A bag of incinerated cocaine is arranged in an elegant pile. Pornographic videotapes, dissolved in solvent, form suggestive inkblots. A gun is reduced to a heap of red rust. 

Perpetual Canon

‘If you start with a found object, that object already has a history to draw on.’

These things are in a constant state of becoming and having been. They are on a journey. And in recasting them, Parker transforms their significance along with their fate.

‘My work is consistently unstable, in flux, leant against a wall, hovering, or so fragile it might collapse. Perhaps that is what I feel about my own relationship with the world.’

Parker may be asking us to think, not just about the items themselves, but about the people who invest these things with meaning; about individuals and their relationships with each other; about the darkness on the edge of town.

'Violence is part of everybody's life, whether you like, or express it, or not. My work utilises all the energies that I have, and part of it is violent, and I'd rather it be out than in.’

An Oliver Twist doll has been chopped in two by the guillotine that decapitated Marie Antoinette. A bullet has been melted down and spun into a fine thread. The poison of a rattlesnake is intermingled with its antidote and black and white ink to form Rorschach blots.

'Beauty is too easy. Often in my work I take beautiful objects and do extreme things to them, so that they are overlaid with something a bit more sinister and violent.’

Parker wrapped Auguste Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’ in a mile of string. 

‘It became a piece about the complications of relationships - the strings that bind you together can also smother you.’

Cornelia Parker, studio, London 2013 : © Anne-Katrin Purkiss

Parker’s most famous work is perhaps ‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View.’ She took an ordinary garden shed – ‘the place where you store things you can’t quite throw away’ - and used Semtex to blow it up with all its contents. She then suspended the debris in mid-air. There’s a torch, a trowel and various other tools; pots, planks and pitchforks; a bike, a book and a broom – all shattered, shredded and scattered; frozen in time, as if the shed ‘was re-exploding, or perhaps coming back together again.’

'I take things that are worn out through overuse, that have become clichés… and I give them a more incandescent future.’

In a recent interview (RA Magazine) Parker threw light on her shed piece by using a term coined by social anthropologist JG Frazer: ‘sympathetic magic.’ In Pagan rites and rituals actions were performed on representative objects in order to affect future outcomes. They would, for example, make an animal sacrifice in order to ensure a good harvest, shedding blood so as to protect lives.

‘You mimic the thing you are most afraid of, thereby warding off the imminent danger.’

Perhaps by focusing on our doubts, fears and frustrations; by reconfiguring the objects that represent our complacency, errors and anxieties, we can address our past and change our future; we can cast out demons. Perhaps we have a choice.

We usually encounter the concept of creative destruction in a business context. It is a wearily familiar phrase uttered enthusiastically by our tech overlords. It tends to come hand-in-hand with a wanton disregard for jobs, communities and social impact. I found Parker’s articulation of the idea far more compelling.

'A lot of my work has been about stuff I've been frightened of: cliffs, explosions, meteorites, that kind of stuff. I would have been this trembling blob of fear if I hadn't got into making art, which is a good way of deferring it.’

'Everything must change.
Nothing remains the same.
Everyone must change.
No one and nothing remains the same.
Young becomes old.
Oh, mysteries do unfold.
'Cause that's the way of time.
Nothing and no one remains the same.
There is so little in life you can be sure of,
Except the rain comes from the clouds,
Sunlight from the sky,
And hummingbirds do fly.’
Nina Simone, ‘Everything must Change’ (I Benard)

No. 377

My M&S Joggers: Making Difficult Disclosures in Public Places

'Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.’
André Malraux

We had a few friends over for dinner and there was a lull in the conversation. This might be the time, I thought, to mention my M&S joggers. 

And so I began:

‘I read an article the other day about people making random purchases during lockdown - to alleviate the boredom. Well I’ve decided to jump on board the casualisation trend by buying myself some navy Marks & Spencer’s joggers. With a matching hoodie.’

My wife looked across at me – in silence.

‘Really, Jim?’ said a friend. ’When are you planning on wearing them?’

‘I thought I’d loaf around the house a bit on a quiet day. They’ll be fine for popping to the gym or down to the shops. Maybe I could wear them at the local. Actually the joggers and hoodie look rather good together as a matching pair.’ 

I sensed my wife’s gaze from the other end of the table. A frown had formed on her face. Still she said nothing. But I knew what she was thinking. 

She would regard any departure in the direction of sports casual-wear as an ominous lowering of sartorial standards, a first step on the slippery slope towards sloth and indolence; a concession to age and decay. She would not approve.

Indeed the anticipation of my wife’s censure had prompted me to raise the subject at a social gathering. I’ve determined over the years that it’s best to make difficult disclosures in public situations. It diminishes the displeasure; diffuses the danger. It cushions the crime in a soft layer of gentle admonishments and light-hearted reproach.

‘Bit of a change from wearing suits all day, Jim.’

‘Are you sure you’re sporty enough for joggers?’

Indeed one of our dinner guests actually commended me on my good taste.

‘Well, I think they sound great. Everyone likes joggers. Have you tried them on?’

‘Yes, and I’ve bought a grey set too!’

I think there may be a lesson here for brands. Don’t suppress your secrets, or cover up your mistakes. Don’t whisper them quietly in the hope they’ll not be noticed; or confess them only to the few who are directly affected. Rather you should expose your blunders to the sunlight of popular scrutiny; acknowledge your missteps in the court of public opinion. You may find that people respect your openness, accept your contrition and forgive your failings. 

‘Three things cannot long stay hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.’
Buddha

I’ve still not properly worn my M&S joggers and hoodie combo. I’ve been waiting for a bout of illness, or a festive season, or a weekend in the country…

But I still think they look rather fine.

'If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.'
George Orwell
 

'There's a note underneath your front door
That I wrote twenty years ago.
Yellow paper and a faded picture
And a secret in an envelope.
There's no reasons, no excuses,
There's no second-hand alibis.
Just some black ink
On some blue lines and a shadow you won't recognize.’
The Civil Wars, '20 Years', (J Williams / John White)

No. 376

Blood Memories: Alvin Ailey’s Emotional Embrace

Alvin Ailey. Photo: Norman Maxon, New York Public Library

'I’m Alvin Ailey. I’m a choreographer. I create movement and I’m searching for truth in movement.'

I recently watched a fine film documenting the life and work of choreographer Alvin Ailey. (‘Ailey’ directed by Jamila Wignot, 2021)

'I wanted to explore Black culture, and I wanted that culture to be a revelation.’

Ailey was an innovative dance maker who channelled his own experience onto the stage. He founded a company that celebrated African American culture and produced performances that resonated with audiences all over the world. His work was heartfelt, dramatic and supremely lyrical. Where the traditional ballet world could be cold, cerebral and rarefied, here was dance that was warm, physical and sensual - created around what most of us today would recognise as dance music. 

‘As choreographers we start with an empty space and a body or two, and we say ‘Carve this space.’ I love creating something where there was nothing before.’

There’s a great deal we can learn from this visionary man.

1. ‘Justify Your Steps’

Born in Rogers, Texas in 1931, Ailey was raised by his mother, who moved from town to town looking for work in the cotton fields or in domestic service. 

‘Texas was a tough place to be. I mean if you were Black you were nothing.’

When Ailey was 12 they moved to Los Angeles where he had his first taste of dance on stage, seeing performances by the Ballet Russe of Monte Carlo and by the African American pioneer Katherine Dunham. 

Ailey studied dance under Lester Horton whose company was one of the first racially integrated troupes in the United States.

‘Lester taught us to justify movement. Not just to do a step, but to feel something about the step. Not just to do a plie, but to give it some kind of emotion.’

After Horton’s death in 1953, Ailey took on the role of company director and began to choreograph his own work. He also performed in a number of Broadway shows. 

2. Find ‘Release’

At that time opportunities for Black dancers and artists were occasional and marginal.

‘You were very specially a guest artist there. You could move into this neighbourhood for a minute. But after you’ve finished doing your gig, please move out.’
Judith Jamison, Dancer

Ailey resolved to establish his own company, one that would celebrate the African-American experience and at the same time provide secure work for Black performers. 

'I always felt that that dance was a natural part of what I wanted to express, that what I can do with my body was a part, a very important part, of me, and a way to release some of those things in myself that I had been looking for.’

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in a 2018 performance of "Revelations," at New York City Center.
Photo: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

3. Draw on Your ‘Blood Memories’

In 1958 Ailey founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and set about creating dance to the music of spirituals, gospel and blues; conveying movement and imagery recollected from church, house parties and roadside honky-tonks. Two years later these ‘blood memories’ formed the basis of his most iconic work: ‘Revelations.’

'I came up with a piece. A saga to the Black experience. I would call it ‘Revelations’. . . My blood memories. The memories of my parents, uncles and aunts. Blues and gospel songs that I knew from Texas.’

Spinning, striding, swooning and swaying; hands outstretched, lowered to the soil and reaching for the sky. The dancers are torn between joy and pain, suffering and salvation. In long white robes they process to church, holding their parasols up high. Hands on hips, backs arched, heads to heaven. They wade in the water; run to save their souls; settle down on stools to talk at sunset, in canary coloured gowns and hats, fans fluttering.

'I've been 'buked and I've been scorned
Tryin' to make this journey all alone.
You may talk about me sure as you please.
Your talk will never drive me down to my knees.’
Mahalia Jackson, ‘I’ve Been Buked’ 

4. Dramatise Universal Themes

While Ailey articulated his community’s values and experiences in his work, he also sought to explore universal themes and to be broadly entertaining. His ballets addressed love and loss, the trials of being an artist, the tribulations of being a mother, the death of a friend.

'I wanted to do the kind of dance that could be done for the man on the streets, the people. I wanted to show Black people that they could come down to these concert halls. That it was part of their culture being done there. And that it was universal.'

A still from Ailey. ‘He’s a public figure, who can’t live out all of himself in public.’ Photograph: Neon

5. If You Want to Say Something, You’ve First Got To Get the Audience’s Attention

In the 1960s the US State Department sponsored AAADT's international tours to Asia, Africa, Europe and Russia. Performances broadcast on Moscow television were seen by over 22 million viewers. By the start of the 1970s the troupe had established a reputation at home and abroad. And in 1972 it became a resident company of New York City Center.

Ailey was keen to convey his concerns about civil rights and social injustice. He believed that a message first needs an audience.

‘In order to say something to an audience you’ve got to get them to look at you and listen to you. So if I’m trying to make a protest statement, the audience is much more likely to get that message if they can hear something like ‘House of the Rising Sun.''

Ailey’s 1969 piece ‘Masekela Language’ was prompted by the assassination of Black Panther activist Fred Hampton. In one scene a group of dancers cradle a dead man, as a voice addresses the audience, repeating over and over: ‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.’

6. Wrap Your Colleagues in an ‘Emotional Embrace’

Ailey had a robust commitment to excellence and a fierce passion to realise his vision. He could be a hard taskmaster. But he also established a deep supportive rapport with his dancers. He wrapped them in an emotional embrace.

‘If he was talking to you from 50 feet away you would feel that embrace. You would feel that comfort in knowing you could make an absolute fool of yourself. You would feel safe to extend yourself enough so that you felt free.’
Judith Jamison, Dancer

7. ‘You Have to Be Possessed’

Ailey regarded dance as a vocation and he was well aware that it came at a price. 

‘Dance, it’s an enormous sacrifice. I mean, it’s a physical sacrifice, dancing hurts. You don’t make that much money. . .  It’s a tough thing, you know, you have to be possessed to do dance.'

Ailey was a private man. He felt unable to speak publicly about being gay and he had trouble developing relationships. He also put himself under intense pressure to sustain the company’s finances and to keep producing new and innovative work.

'We still spend more time chasing funds than we do in the studio in creative work.'

'No matter what you write or choreograph, you feel it's not enough.’

'Sometimes you feel bad about yourself when there's no reason to.’

In 1980, isolated and exhausted, Ailey suffered a breakdown. He was later found to have been suffering from bipolar disorder. 

‘The agony of coming from where I came from and then dancing on the Champs Elysee. The contrast of all that. On one hand, the darkness where you feel like you are just nobody, nothing. And the other hand, you are the king, you’re on top of the world.'

Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in the "Move, Members, Move" section of Revelations, in 2011.Earl Gibson/AP

8. ‘Don’t Be Put in a Bag’

Ailey recovered and returned to the company, transferring day-to-day management to his protégé Judith Jamison. He carried on producing work and sought increasingly to break from the constraints imposed on him by the expectations of critics and audiences.

'The problem is, if you’re a Black anything in this country, people want to put you into a bag. People sometimes say, ‘Well, you know, why is he doing that now, why can’t he stick to the blues and the spirituals?’ And I’m also a 20th century American, and I respond to Bach, and Ellington, and Benjamin Britten, and Samuel Barber, and why shouldn’t I?’

9. Make It Easier for the Next Generation

'I wanna be ready.
I wanna be ready.
Ready to put on my long, white robe.'
‘I Wanna Be Ready’

In 1989 Ailey died from an AIDS-related illness. He was 58. 

Ailey was a pioneer who had his eyes on the horizon. As well as creating more than 100 ballets, he ensured that his company performed pieces by other choreographers so that its future would be secure without him. Following his death, Jamison took over as artistic director and the AAADT went from strength to strength. Ailey had always wanted to make it easier for the next generation. His aim was true.

‘To provide a place of beauty and excitement, a place for other choreographers to experiment. To provide a place where people can come and feel like they can add themselves and then reap the benefits of what they put in. I want it to be easier than it was for me.’

'I wanna go where the north wind blows.
I wanna know what the falcon knows.
I wanna go where the wild goose goes.
High flying bird, high flying bird, fly on...
I want the clouds over my head.
I don't want no store bought bed.
I'm gonna live until I'm dead.
Mother, mother, mother, mother save your child.
Right on, be free.’
Voices of East Harlem, ‘Right On, Be Free’ (C Griffin)

No. 375

MC Escher: 'Only Those Who Attempt the Absurd will Achieve the Impossible’

'We adore chaos because we love to produce order.'
MC Escher

I recently watched a film documenting the life and work of Dutch graphic artist MC Escher (2018’s ‘Journey to Infinity’ by Robin Lutz).

‘I don’t belong anywhere any more…I hover between mathematics and art.’

Through his drawings, lithographs and woodcuts, Escher prompted us to reflect on perspective and perception; dreams and reality; order and chaos. Through his mesmerising tessellations and fantastical landscapes; impossible objects and implausible architecture, he bridged the divide between art and mathematics. His was a playful world of visual paradox, magical metamorphoses and infinite possibility. He cultivated a sense of wonder.

'Wonder is the salt of the earth. Originality is merely an illusion.’

M. C. Escher tessellation

1. ‘Enjoy the Tiniest Details’.

In 1898 Maurits Escher was born into a wealthy family in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. He was a sickly child and struggled at school. But he was always good at drawing. 

‘The only bright spots are the drawing lessons. Not because I am any good at it, but because it’s my only comfort during this awful time.’

Escher attended the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts. Still suffering from weak health, in 1922 he set off on a recuperative trip through Italy, visiting Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast. It seemed to do him some good.

‘I cannot describe the curious feeling this lovely beauty gives me. My poor eyes are straining and my poor brain is trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Rarely if ever have I felt so calm, pleasant and comfortable than lately.’

In Italy Escher created richly detailed drawings of hilltop towns and seaside communities; houses clustering around imposing churches; monasteries nestling alongside monumental mountain rocks.

On his travels Escher also met Jetta Umiker, whom he married in 1924. 

‘She exerts an influence on me similar to that of an electromagnet on a scrappy piece of cast iron.’

The young couple settled in Rome from where Escher continued to make study trips. He was beguiled by the beautiful intricacies of nature.

‘I want to learn to look and see better whilst I am drawing. I want to enjoy the tiniest details…With your nose right on top of [a small plant] you see all of its beauty and all of its simplicity. But when you start drawing only then do you realise how terribly complicated and shapeless that beauty really is.’

2. Be Open to Inspiration

Escher travelled to Spain where he was particularly inspired by the fourteenth-century Alhambra palace in Granada. He was fascinated by the Moorish architecture, the intricate decorative designs on the walls and ceilings, the coloured tiles with their infinite variety of geometric patterns.

‘What fascinates me in the tiles of the Alhambra is the discovery of a motif that repeats itself according to a certain system.’

Escher determined that Moorish tessellation could provide the basis for a new direction for his art. But, in contrast with the designs he had studied at the Alhambra, his would accommodate wildlife.

‘What a pity the Moors didn’t use figures derived from nature.’

Starting with a series of geometric grids, Escher created complex configurations of interlocking birds and butterflies; intertwining fish and reptiles; intersecting lizards in red, green and white. His work explored the mesmeric effects of pattern and repetition, the relationship between space and time. 

‘I began to see the possibilities offered by the regular division of the plane. For the first time I dared to create compositions based on the problem of expressing endlessness within a limited plane.’

3. Follow your Passion No Matter What Others May Think

Escher was increasingly drawn to think of his art in mathematical terms. In this respect he felt a fellowship with Bach.

‘I am smitten by Bach’s music. A short motif that repeats itself in various ways – identically in a different key, back to front or upside down. They’re almost mathematical figures.’

Escher pressed on in pursuit of his passion, even though he was unsure whether what he was creating was art at all.

‘The mathematical interest is becoming so dominant that I am wondering whether it is still trying to be art and whether it even belongs in an art exhibition.’

Escher’s colleagues and companions were not impressed with his new direction.

‘Deeply saddening and hangover-inducing remains the fact that I’m starting to speak a language that is understood by very few people.’

4. Cultivate a Sense of Wonder

Gradually the political climate in Italy under Mussolini became more toxic. In 1935, when his nine-year-old son was obliged to wear a military uniform to school, Escher moved his family to Switzerland. Later they decamped to Brussels and finally, in 1941, they settled in Baarn, the Netherlands.

'What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.'

As the Second World War closed in around them, Escher focused single-mindedly on his work. His designs became more and more inventive. Drawing on childhood games of word association, he let his imagination run free.

'My work is a game, a very serious game.'

A river flows from day to night. A flock of black birds emerge magically from white fields, while white birds flying in the opposite direction appear mysteriously from dark farmland. Reptiles rise up from a two-dimensional picture, crawling across a series of three-dimensional objects before re-entering the picture once more. A waterfall is in perpetual motion. Two faces are formed from one continuous ribbon. A hand draws itself. An endless series of faceless figures rush downstairs, passing a continuous stream of characters running upstairs at different angles.

Day and Night (1938)

'Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?'

Escher created magical, slightly disturbing worlds that prompt us to question our notions of reality and illusion, order and chaos. He was driven by a sense of wonder.

'He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonderful.'

5. Be Your Hardest Taskmaster and Your Harshest Critic

Of course, although Escher’s work was playful and imaginative, it required an innate gift for mathematics and a phenomenal eye for detail.

‘It is really only a matter of dogged persistence and continuous pitiless self criticism.’

Escher was motivated by a fierce desire to attempt the impossible.

‘Any schoolboy with a little aptitude will perhaps be better at drawing than I am. But what he most often lacks is the tough yearning for realisation, the teeth-grinding stubbornness, and saying: even though I know I cannot do it, I want to do it anyway.’

6. Pursue a Vision that Cannot Be Realised

In the 1960s Escher was surprised to find his work enthusiastically adopted by the counterculture in the west coast of the United States.

‘What on earth does this young generation see in my work? Doesn’t it lack all the qualities that are hip these days? It is cerebral and rationalised instead of wild and sexy. And how can they reconcile it with their addiction to narcotics?’

So Escher wasn’t impressed when Mick Jagger asked for an image to use on an album cover.

‘Please tell Mr Jagger that I am not Maurits to him, but, very sincerely, MC Escher.’

In 1969 Escher finished his last woodcut, ‘Snakes’, in which three serpents wind through a pattern of linked rings that shrink to infinity. He died in a hospital in Hilversum in 1972, aged 73.

Portrait of M.C. Escher by Nikki Arai

'Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible…. I think it's in my basement... Let me go upstairs and check.’

Escher’s designs should resonate with people in the business of brands and communication. We too work with pattern, rhythm and repetition, bridging the fields of art and mathematics, endeavouring to create a sense of wonder in our audiences. We would do well to embrace something of Escher’s dogged persistence, his childlike playfulness and his relentless quest for the impossible. 

‘I always pursue a vision that cannot be realised.’

'As around the sun the earth knows she's revolving,
And the rosebuds know to bloom in early May.
Just as hate knows love's the cure,
You can rest your mind assure,
That I'll be loving you always.’
Stevie Wonder, ‘As'

No. 372