The Nun in the Cathedral: Beware the Inclination to Go with the Flow

Diego Velasquez, ’The Nun Jeronima de la Fuente'

'Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.'
Marshall McLuhan

I’m not sure I consider myself a holiday expert. I don’t really like the heat or beaches or exotic food; the awkward new acquaintances, scatter cushions and exacting shower mechanics. And I’ve never quite mastered the flip-flop.

I am nonetheless partial to an Italian Tri-Centre Break. This vacation format works on the assumption that every Italian town has some decent restaurants and a couple of charming churches; an agreeable piazza filled with old folk drinking coffee, a gallery stocked with unfamiliar Renaissance art - entirely sufficient to merit a couple of nights’ stay. And if you cluster a few of these towns together, you arrive at a very satisfactory holiday. Bologna-Ravenna-Parma; Cremona-Mantova-Verona; Vicenza-Padova-Ferrara. Ideal!

Like everyone else, I try to be ‘a traveller, not a tourist.’ Not easy for a bloke from Essex. One tactic I occasionally employ is to attend Sunday Mass at the local Cathedral. For an hour I can blend in with the natives in a space devoid of sightseers. I can feel like I belong. 

On a visit to Parma some years ago, having ascertained from my hotel the times of services, I arrived at the Duomo just as they were clearing out the tourists. With a confident gesture I signalled that I was there for Mass and settled into a central pew with my fellow Parmensi. I took some time to observe my neighbours, sat back and admired the impressive architecture. I fitted in.

A small elderly Nun handed me an Order of Service and mumbled some words of welcome in Italian. ‘Bene grazie’ I replied with a smile and what I’m sure was a very convincing accent.

The church gradually filled up. It was quite a big place and we had a pretty good turnout. At ten o’clock precisely, with the toll of a bell and a short procession of candles, thuribles and priests in colourful vestments, the Mass began. Although the service was in Italian, of which I know only a few words, it all progressed along familiar lines. I was aware when to nod and bow and cross myself and so forth, and felt an all-consuming sense of belonging. 

Then a peculiar thing happened. When it came to the time for the Readings, the whole affair, which had been going so smoothly, suddenly ground to a halt. No one had taken up a position at the lectern. People began looking round at the other attendees. The Duomo echoed with confused whispering. 

At length the Nun I had met at the outset - who was now sitting in the front row - turned right round in her bench and, with a formidable glare, pointed towards the centre of the congregation. I followed the line of her arm, carefully calculating the geometry of her posture, and concluded, with a certain amount of anxiety, that she was pointing squarely in my direction.

It was at this juncture that I glanced at my Order of Service and realised that no one else around me had been given one. Perhaps those mumbled words from the elderly Nun had been more than a welcome. Perhaps they had been an invitation to read the Lesson.

I promptly hid the incriminating paper under my seat, looked intently at the floor and began to sweat profusely. I could sense that the eyes of the whole congregation were now upon me. I was determined not to budge. 

After what seemed like an eternity, the Nun herself took the stand and delivered the Readings. Order was restored and the Mass regained its impetus. At the end of the service I made a quick bolt for the exit. I didn’t quite feel that I belonged any more.

'It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.'
Jonathan Swift

So much of what we do in life is based on false assumptions, outdated suppositions, wrong information. Yet we are driven by inertia, carried along by our own momentum, floating on a cloud of misplaced confidence. We want to fit in. We want to belong. We follow the crowd and go with the flow. We nod our assent. We unthinkingly conform. We laugh at jokes we don’t really comprehend. We agree to actions we don’t really endorse. We say ‘yes’ when we should really be saying ‘no’.

It takes conscious effort, an act of will, to dismiss the urge to belong; to resist the force of momentum in our lives; to stop for a moment, reflect and ask: ‘Why?’

‘No, no, no.
You don't love me
And I know now.
No, no, no.
You don't love me,
Yes I know now.
'Cause you left me, Baby,
And I got no place to go now.’

Dawn Penn, ‘You Don’t Love Me’ (Cobbs / Mcdaniel)

No. 300

Bright Sun, Dark Shadows: Tullio Crali’s Futurist Vision

The Forces of the Bend

‘Every generation must build its own city.’
Antonio Sant’ Elia, Architect

I recently visited an exhibition of the work of Futurist painter Tullio Crali (The Estorick Collection, London - now closed, but you can still buy the excellent catalogue).

Futurism was a movement founded by the writer FT Marinetti. It began with his 1909 publication of a Manifesto in which he argued that Italy’s great artistic heritage was holding it back; that all its museums and libraries should be destroyed; and it should embrace a more vibrant, modern, innovative culture - one that articulated the dynamism of the city and the speed of the machine age.

‘There can be no modern painting without the starting point of an absolutely modern sensation.’

Born in 1910, Crali grew up in Croatia and north-east Italy. From an early age he loved to draw, and he was inspired when at 15 he came across an article about Futurism in his local paper. He began experimenting with Futurist techniques and themes, employing sharp angles, confident curves and bright colours to convey the vigour of the modern world; cubism and abstraction to express its vital energy.
Crali painted skyscrapers ascending magisterially into the clouds; sailors busying themselves beneath the bridge of a high-tech battleship; cranes and dredgers creating their own bustling rhythms; a bold red racing car taking a corner at full tilt.

Broken Engine

The Futurists were particularly fascinated by aviation and they dedicated a new genre of art to it: ‘aeropainting.’ Flight was for them a supreme achievement of the industrial age. It represented speed and technology, progress and liberation. It intensified the gaze, created fresh perspectives on the familiar, and offered breathtaking new vistas.

‘The sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.’
FT Marinetti, ‘Manifesto of Futurism’

Crali was himself caught up in this enthusiasm when in 1928 he flew in an aeroplane for the first time.

‘Everything was wondrous, and when I found myself back on the ground I felt as if I had been robbed.'

Crali created many images that captured the elation of his experience in the air. Flying above the metropolis, floating above the clouds. The elegant curves of the propeller. The thundering roar of the engines. The bracing view from the cockpit as a pilot nose-dives into the city.

Nose Dive on the City

‘He who has to be a creator also has to destroy.’
Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’

Crali’s work was thrilling, forceful, energetic and optimistic. But there was a shadow looming over the Futurist movement. From the very beginning their passion came wrapped in a nationalist flag, and they believed that wholesale destruction was necessary to make room for worthwhile creation. Increasingly through the ‘30s their work addressed military themes, and the movement became closely aligned with Mussolini’s Fascist regime.

Crali was something of an exception. Though he created some official war art, he often clashed with the occupying Nazi authorities who considered him a subversive. 

Nonetheless Futurism ran out of road with Marinetti’s death in 1944 and the end of World War II. Crali, now sceptical about political dogma and disillusioned with the evolving Italian art scene, for a while took to painting mournful still lifes.

'My art changes form, but not substance. A lack of faith in mankind leads me to turn my attention to nature.’

Yet Crali remained a solitary enthusiast for Futurist ideals. And whilst over the coming years he found new forms of artistic expression, he kept returning to pictures of open skies, aerobatic display teams and supersonic flight. He always had his head in the clouds.

Crali died in 2000 in Milan, aged 90.

The Futurist story resonates today. On the one hand, there is something thrilling about their enthusiastic embrace of the modern world. Today, when the possibilities of technology seem boundless, we should retain something of the Futurists’ zeal, their optimism and their evangelism for change.

On the other hand, we need to be cautious. We may hear troubling echoes of Futurism’s transgressions in Silicon Valley’s obsession with creative destruction; with its corporate philosophy of ‘move fast and break things;’ with its clear eyed confidence in its own self worth and manifest destiny. 

A bright sun casts dark shadows. 


'My poor heart just flew away,
When it realized one day
The dreams that we planned
Would only end in shadowland.’

k.d. lang, ‘Shadowland'

No. 275

When Revolutionaries Become Reactionaries: Alfred Munnings and the Disenchantments of Age

‘My Wife, My Horse and Myself’ - Alfred Munnings

‘The most radical revolutionary will become conservative the day after the revolution.’
Hannah Arendt, Philosopher and Political Theorist

I confess I’m partial to the art of Alfred Munnings. 

In the first half of the twentieth century Munnings painted East Anglian life in bold, bright colours: race meetings, horse fairs and hunting; farm hands, gentry and gypsies. Mostly he just painted horses, for whom he seemed to have a greater affection than he had for people. He titled one painting ‘My Wife, My Horse and Myself’ and the horse takes centre stage.

To modern eyes Munnings’ paintings are not particularly challenging or thought provoking. But in his youth he was part of the progressive art colony based on the south coast of Cornwall, the Newlyn School, and he served as a war artist during the First World War. His work is honest, open and true. It is rooted in the English countryside and English painting tradition. It is in its own way rather beautiful.

‘Every hero becomes a bore at last.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essayist

Sadly Munnings’ reputation in the art world is tarnished. As he grew older he developed a passionate dislike of modernism. In his late sixties he served as President of the Royal Academy of Art and, in a speech broadcast live on the BBC in 1949, he drunkenly accused his fellow painters of ‘shilly shallying in this so called modern art.’ He suggested that Cezanne, Matisse and Henry Moore had corrupted art, and he joked that he’d like to join Churchill in kicking Picasso up the arse.

’The Start at Newmarket’ - Alfred Munnings

‘A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.’
Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning Physicist

I was prompted to think about Munnings by a piece I read in The Times (Rhys Blakely, 17 September 2019). A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tracked the careers of 13,000 elite scientists, looking at their funding, published papers and citations. The research suggests that ‘superstar scientists,’ once they have achieved a position of authority, tend to suppress new ideas from other quarters. After their deaths their field of study is often invigorated by younger rivals, who suddenly publish research at a faster rate, and by scientists migrating from other adjacent subject areas. 

‘Our results suggest that, once in control of the commanding heights of their fields, star scientists tend to hold on to their exalted position – and to the power that comes with it – a bit too long.’ 
Pierre Azoulay, MIT

This conclusion may resonate with people working in business today. The senior ranks of industry are quite often filled with individuals who in their youthful prime were high-achieving radicals. However, with the passing of the years and the accrual of status, recognition and rewards, these same people can become increasingly conservative, set on defending their turf from new people and new ideas. They can’t help regarding the world through the prism of their own talents and beliefs. In time most revolutionaries become reactionaries.

’Morning Ride’ - Alfred Munnings

Speaking from experience, as you get older you can feel marginalised. The world seems to be reinventing itself around the needs and tastes of new generations. It’s easy to resent change. And conservatism creeps over you like a comfortable blanket. We all occasionally suffer Luddite leanings.

‘All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disenchantments of age.’
Robert Louis Stevenson, Writer

I’m not sure it’s wise to ‘rage against the dying of the light.’  At least not in the reactionary way that Munnings did. We may not want to run at the future, but we certainly shouldn’t run away from it. The grumpy old man or woman is rarely attractive, seldom makes for an effective leader, and should probably avoid the sauce when speaking in public.

'Old man, take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you.
I need someone to love me
The whole day through.
Ah, one look in my eyes
And you can tell that's true.’

Neil Young, ‘Old Man'

No. 259

Seeing Yourself from Unexpected Angles: Truth Telling by Lucian Freud

Reflection with Two Children (Self-Portrait) - Lucian Freud

‘With self-portraits ‘likeness’ becomes a different thing, because in ordinary portraits you try to paint the person in front of you, whereas in self-portraits you’ve got to paint yourself as another person.’
Lucian Freud

I recently attended an excellent exhibition of Lucian Freud’s self-portraits (at the Royal Academy, London, until 26 January 2020).

Freud is renowned as a portraitist of quiet intensity. He engaged in what he called ‘biological truth telling,’ endeavouring to capture the physical reality of his sitters: his wives and mistresses, daughters and dogs, friends and acquaintances.

‘I work from the people that interest me and that I care about and think about in rooms that I live in and know.’

Typically Freud painted in his studio standing at his easel, applying thick layers of paint to the canvas with his large hog’s-hair brushes. He had his subjects sprawl naked on the floor, on a sofa or bed, at unusual or uncomfortable angles. His process involved long sittings and could take weeks or months. One woman needed osteopathy after her portrait. His conversation was light and witty, but his gaze was direct, frank and sometimes unsettling.

Freud  was particularly adept at capturing the texture and colour of flesh, employing Cremnitz White to suggest the skin’s luminous qualities. 

‘I want paint to work as flesh.’

Startled Man: Self Portrait, 1948. Photograph: © The Lucian Freud

Freud believed that, even when he painted other people, he was always painting himself – his perspective, his point of view, his particular relationship with the sitter.

‘My work is purely autobiographical. It’s about myself and my surroundings.’

And so when Freud painted his son Freddy we see the artist’s own reflection in the window. When he painted ‘Flora with Blue Toenails’ his shadow looms ominously over her in the foreground. And look, there are Freud’s feet at the foot of that sofa. There are a couple of his self-portraits leaning against a wall. He is ever present. 

'I thought, after putting so many other people through it, I ought to subject myself to the same treatment.'

Freud painted or drew his own image throughout his life. He holds up a white feather to us, a gift from his first girlfriend. He regards us through a houseplant, from the side of his wife’s bed. He looks startled and surprised - open mouthed and wide eyed, as if he has seen himself for the very first time. His lips are fleshy, his nose slightly twisted, his stare piercing. He appears sceptical, challenging. His face is covered in shadows that suggest the contours of his soul: a landscape of doubt, misgivings and resentment.

Bur despite his famous grandfather, Freud resisted psychological interpretations of his work. He was seeking physical not spiritual truth. He often drew his own image in his notebooks. Here we see his roughly sketched face surrounded by cryptic words: Prudent Miss, High Authority, Time To Reflect. We think for a moment that this may signify something rather important. And then realise he’s calculating his next bet on the horses. 

'Self-Portrait with a Black Eye' - Lucian Freud

On one occasion Freud came away from an argument with a taxi driver with a black eye. He rushed back to the studio to capture his disfigured face, the dark swollen mess that his left eye had become.

‘I don’t accept the information that I get when I look at myself and that’s where the trouble starts.’

Freud painted himself with the aid of mirrors rather than photographs. He preferred natural light. Although he avoided having mirrors about the house, he set them up at various places around his studio, so that he could catch himself from unexpected angles. For ‘Reflection with Two Children’ he placed a mirror on the floor. He towers over us, his body foreshortened, sinister and threatening. Two of his children stand outside the composition. Are we seeing a child’s eye view of their father?

Of course, most of us nowadays are given to self-reflection in some form or another. We like to consider and compare our appearance, our character, our achievements. But for the most part we tend to look in the mirror square-on. We see a consistent picture of ourselves, from just one perspective. It is merely selfie-awareness.

Freud suggests that we should be sceptical of this image; that we should try to capture ourselves unawares; to see ourselves as others see us. If we want a proper reflection of our true self, why not ask our friends and colleagues, our partners and families? How do you see me? What do you make of me? What are my strengths? Where am I going wrong? We should seek to see ourselves from unexpected angles.

'I don’t want to retire. I want to paint myself to death.’

When he was 70 Freud painted himself nude for the first time. With unflinching frankness he conveyed the frailty of his ageing body, posing with unlaced boots, brandishing his easel and palette knife, proud of the tools of his trade. He kept reworking the portrait over several months, never quite satisfied.

‘I couldn’t scrap it, because I would be doing away with myself.’

'One day you're going to have to face
A deep dark truthful mirror.
And it's going to tell you things that I still love you too much to say.’

Elvis Costello, ‘Deep Dark Truthful Mirror'

 No 256

In Quiet Contemplation: ‘It Is in Silence that One Gets to Face Oneself’

Helene Schjerfbeck,Self-Portrait, Black Background, 1915

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck (Royal Academy, London, until 27 October).

Schjerfbeck was born in Helsinki in 1862. Her father was an office manager in the state railways. When at the age of 4 she fell down the stairs and broke her hip, she was given drawing materials to cheer her up. It soon became clear that she had a special talent, and at 11 she was sent to study art in Helsinki. In 1880 she moved to Paris, and she subsequently spent time in artists’ colonies at Pont Aven, Brittany and St Ives, Cornwall. 

Schjerfbeck began as a realist, and over the years her work embraced impressionism and abstraction. She painted still lifes and landscapes, rural views and domestic scenes. Yet one is most struck by her portraits.

Schjerfbeck’s subjects regard us over their shoulders. Then they turn away and look down. Sometimes they simply close their eyes. Her friend Maria attends to her book with her back to us. Her black-clad mother reads, sews and sits silently with her hands clasped in front of her. The seamstress and the schoolgirl are lost in private reflection. 

Occasionally the melancholy mood is lifted by an element of fashion. Schjerfbeck subscribed to Marie Claire magazine and had an eye for a beret, a cloche hat, a bold shade of lipstick. 

From her early twenties until the end of her life, aged 83, Schjerfbeck painted raw, candid self-portraits. Hair neat, lips pursed, eyebrows arched. Angular features. A spot of rouge on her cheeks. The portraits become progressively more pared back, more abstract and anguished. Youth fades, skin pales, colours recede, shadows fall. Finally she faces death, gaunt and alone.

One leaves the Schjerfbeck exhibition haunted by a sense of sadness. She was an artist of introspection; of quiet rooms and muted colours; of silence and stillness.

When I was at college I recall a visit from my friend Catrin’s parents. I was babbling away, filling the awkward silence with inconsequential nonsense - as is my wont. At length Cat’s father addressed me in somewhat severe Welsh tones:

‘It is in silence that one gets to face oneself.’

These words stuck with me.

Helene Schjerfbeck,Maria (detail), 1909

I have generally subscribed to the view that an active mind needs constant stimulus; that it must process that stimulus into opinions and beliefs; that we must always be looking, listening and learning, deliberating, debating and discussing. But there’s a limit. As I’ve aged I’ve realised that it’s also important to stop and catch one’s breath; to liberate the brain from the trivial and unimportant; to pause and take stock. I have found it helpful when on the verge of sleep, on the edge of consciousness, to review the day and reflect on tomorrow. I guess I’ve gradually learned to appreciate absence and stillness.

‘Dreaming does not suit me. To work, to live through work, that is my path.’

Fate dealt Schjerfbeck a cruel hand. Her childhood accident left her with a lifelong limp and she suffered poor health. She was unlucky in love. Financially challenged, she spent many years nursing her mother in a small town north of Helsinki. She died in a sanatorium in Sweden in 1946. Nonetheless, one can’t help thinking that, though she had a tough life, she probably left it with profound knowledge and understanding, and with a strong sense of self. Perhaps that is enough.

Helene Schjerfbeck - The School Girl II (1908)

'Quiet nights of quiet stars, quiet chords from my guitar,
Floating on the silence that surrounds us.
Quiet thoughts and quiet dreams, quiet walks by quiet streams,
And the window that looks out on Corcovado. Oh how lovely.’

Astrud Gilberto, ‘Quiet Nights (Corcovado)’ (A C Jobim / G Lees)

No. 246

Are You Sitting Uncomfortably? The Healthy Scepticism of Felix Vallotton

Felix Vallotton - la loge de theatre (detail)

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of Swiss artist Felix Vallotton. (The Royal Academy, London, until 29 September, and then the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 29 October to 26 January.)

Vallotton was born into a puritanical protestant family in Lausanne in 1865. Aged 16 he settled in Paris, at first to study and then to practice art. In the 1890s he associated with the circle of artists known as the Nabis (Prophets), whose number included Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. They sought to convey emotion rather than just to record reality. They admired Japanese woodblock prints, and their work was characterised by flattened figures, strong outlines and bold colours; by empty spaces and decorative patterns.

Vallotton became a master of the art of woodcut and he was commissioned to produce illustrations for journals and newspapers, including the influential La Revue Blanche. 

Belle Epoque Paris was prosperous and dynamic, brimming with fashion, fun and creativity. It was the centre of the art world and a hub for scientific innovation. But it was also a hotbed of political unrest and social upheaval. Vallotton seems to have been both captivated by the capital’s boundless energy and conscious of the tensions that lay just beneath the surface. In his work he regarded French society with an amused but critical eye, satirising the customs and values of the bourgeoisie.

There’s a pervasive disquiet about Vallotton’s art. He seems uneasy about the relationships that are played out in the dim lamplight, in the shadows, behind closed doors; uneasy about the turbulence of city life, about the passions of the new consumer society, about the durability of the family unit. What hypocrisy remains unvoiced behind a conventional conservative façade? What secrets and lies lurk around the corner, along the corridor, or beneath the brim of an elegant hat? 

Félix Vallotton,The Ball (Le Ballon), 1899

They’re caressing fabrics at Le Bon Marche. They’re partying in the Latin Quarter. They’re rioting on the streets. The crowd runs for cover from the pouring rain. A smart-suited gentleman waits expectantly by the window. A desolate man weeps into his handkerchief as a woman looks impassively on. A couple embrace by the doorway to a claustrophobic interior. A darkness creeps across the pond in the garden. There’s a child chasing an orange ball, unaware of the looming shadows. There’s something missing in the linen closet. There’s a knife erect in the fruit loaf.

Félix Vallotton,Self-portrait at the Age of Twenty , 1885

Everything seems slightly on edge, an intriguing, incomplete narrative, a pressure cooker about to explode. Vallotton ratchets up the tension with his terse, enigmatic titles: ‘The Lie,’ ‘The Money,’ ‘The Provincial,’ ‘The Extreme Measure.’ His work foreshadows Hopper and Hitchcock in its dark humour and unsettling air of menace. 

Ours is an industry of emotions and enthusiasms; of fashions and fads. So it serves us well to retain a healthy objectivity, a suspicion of success, a caution around modish ideas. Scepticism insures us against egotism. Paranoia inoculates us against complacency. 

As Nigel Bogle was wont to warn, even in the good years, ‘We’re three phone calls away from disaster.’

So don’t get sucked in. Better to keep a cool head than to drink the Kool-Aid. Let’s maintain our distance, keep a wary eye. And like Vallotton, let’s give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

'She had a place in his life.
He never made her think twice.
As he rises to her apology,
Anybody else would surely know
He's watching her go.
But what a fool believes, he sees.’

The Doobie Brothers, ‘What a Fool Believes’ (M McDonald, K Loggins)

No. 244

Forget What You Know: Natalia Goncharova and the Spirit of ‘Everythingism’

Natalia Goncharova (1881- 1962), Peasants Picking Apples 1911 (ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019)

I recently attended an exhibition of the work of Russian artist Natalia Goncharova. (Tate Modern, London until 8 September)

Peasants pick apples and dance in circles. They cut hay at harvest time and gather firewood in the snow. A head-scarfed bread seller caresses a crusty loaf. Two sporty rowers lean into their strokes. A couple of beefy wrestlers are locked in each other’s arms. Trains, planes and bicycles whizz past at incredible speed. Machines manically weave, as factory chimneys loom ominously over us. Angels grapple aeroplanes to the ground. 

Goncharova’s work at once captures the timeless routines of rural Russia and the breathless velocity of the twentieth century. It fizzes with vital energy, radiates with vibrant colour.

‘I believe that colour possesses a strange magic: sad colours, joyous or calm colours, a delicate or stronger colour harmony – these are not simply words that characterise an emotion similar to the sensations of taste. Colours have an effect on one’s psychological make-up.’

Natalia Goncharova’s ‘exhilarating’ Cyclist, 1913. Photograph: © ADAGP/DACS

Goncharova was born into a family of Russian aristocrats in 1881. She grew up on country estates 200 miles from Moscow, and moved to the city when she was 11. At 20 she enrolled to study art at the Moscow Institute and by 22 she was exhibiting in the major salons. 

Although Goncharova was classically trained, she was inspired by modern French painters and by traditional Russian arts and crafts. In 1909 she left the Institute and with fellow radical students formed Moscow's first independent exhibiting group. Critical to her development as an artist was her rejection of everything she had studied at college.

‘I have passed through all that the West has to offer… and all that my country has assimilated from the West… I now shake the dust from my feet and distance myself from the West.’

Goncharova spurned conventional approaches to scale, perspective and naturalism. Her art spanned a range of contemporary styles: Primitivism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism. She painted still lifes, landscapes and nudes; traditional peasant scenes and snapshots of urban upheaval; pure abstractions and interpretations of religious icons.

Nor did Goncherova limit herself to painting. She turned her hand to prints, book illustrations and performance art; to theatre, fashion and interior design. She published zaum, a type of experimental sound poetry. And she invented the shirt-dress.

Goncharova was happy to court controversy. Critics were outraged by a 1910 exhibition of her work that included female nudes and pagan mythology, and she was charged for public display of ‘corrupting’ images.  

She was also a natural publicist. In 1913 a Moscow gallery staged a major retrospective of her work, which included over 800 of her pieces and was the first solo exhibition of any member of the Russian avant-garde. A few weeks before the opening, she and her fellow artists paraded through the streets with hieroglyphic patterns painted on their faces. Journalists had been alerted in advance, and the streets were lined with curious crowds. Some 12,000 people visited the show.

Goncharova left Russia in 1915 to design radical costumes and sets for the Ballets Russes. Unable to return home after the 1917 revolution, she settled in Paris where she continued to create in all manner of media right up until her death aged 81 in 1962.

I left the exhibition in awe of Goncharova’s audacity and exuberance, and of the rich diversity of her output. It’s difficult to define her style because she seemed to embrace so many of them. Indeed fellow artists described her work as ‘everythingism.’ 

'We acknowledge all styles as suitable for the expression of our art, styles existing both yesterday and today.'
Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov

Goncharova suggests that we should not be constrained by our education; that we should not feel obliged to follow established codes and best practice. Hers is a story of liberation, of following one’s passions wherever they lead.

What if we threw off the shackles of convention and taste? What if we rejected modish opinions and the limitations of style? What if we forgot what we know? 

Perhaps like Goncharova we would be free to pursue a broader range of methods, modes and media. Perhaps we too could find our own version of  ‘everythingism.’

'Somebody told me:
"Boy, everything she wants is everything she sees."
I guess I must have loved you,
Because I said you were the perfect girl for me.’

Wham! ‘Everything She Wants’ (G Michael)

No. 242

Lee Krasner: Listening To Your Inner Rhythm

Lee Krasner, The Eye is the First Circleis

‘I was a woman, Jewish, a widow, a damn good painter, thank you, and a little too independent.’
Lee Krasner

I recently attended an exhibition of the American abstract expressionist painter Lee Krasner (‘Living Colour’ at the Barbican, London, until 1 September).

Krasner was born in Brooklyn in 1908 to Jewish parents from the Ukraine. There were no artists in her family, but at 14 she determined that she wanted to become a painter, applying to the only school in New York that offered an art major for girls. She went on to learn classical drawing techniques at the National Academy of Design and cubism at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts.

Early in her career Krasner created murals for public buildings and during the war she designed collages for the windows of New York department stores. She became part of the vibrant New York art scene, hanging out with fellow abstract painters like de Kooning, Rothko, Newman and Still.

On meeting one of her heroes, Piet Mondrian, Krasner discovered he was a fellow jazz fan and took him dancing at a Greenwich Village nightclub. Mondrian was impressed by her work, saying it had ‘a very strong inner rhythm.’ This thought must have resonated with Krasner, as she subsequently spoke of her art in similar terms.

‘I never violate an inner rhythm. I loathe to force anything… I know it is essential for me. I listen to it and I stay with it. I have always been this way. I have regards for the inner voice.’

Krasner’s inner rhythm took her on an extraordinary creative journey.

Lee Krasner, ‘Desert Moon’

In 1945 she married another talented artist on the New York scene, Jackson Pollack, and together they moved to a farmhouse in Springs, Long Island. She responded to the vibrant blossoms of her new surroundings by producing bright colourful abstractions, canvases and mosaics that teemed with life. She painted these ‘Little Images' in her small studio space in an upstairs bedroom. The constraint gave her work a compelling intensity.

When in the early ‘50s Krasner ran out of inspiration, she found herself ripping up the black-and-white drawings that were pinned to her studio walls. Returning a few weeks later, she decided that the torn debris looked interesting, and so embarked on a series of ‘collage paintings’ that incorporated the shredded drawings along with torn canvases and newspapers.

'I painted before Pollock, during Pollock, after Pollock.'

After Pollack died in a car accident in 1956, Krasner took over his larger studio in the barn at Springs. Scale produced a new freedom. Suffering from insomnia, she worked through the night, and as she was reluctant to use colour in unnatural light, she turned to raw and burnt umber. She created her ‘Night Journeys’ series, huge canvases, with fluid, swirling, mournful organic patterns, pulsing with emotion. 

In the early ‘60s Krasner welcomed colour back to her work, employing bright crimson, exuberant yellows, vivid blues and greens. Her ‘Primary Series’ was full of boundless energy, suggestive of exotic flowers and oriental calligraphy.

Krasner did indeed have a strong inner rhythm. She had a remarkable ability to respond to that rhythm with total commitment, following it wherever it took her. She endeavoured to merge the organic with the abstract, the material with the spiritual. She gave us pure emotion, unedited and unfiltered, dynamic and ever changing.

Lee Krasner shot by Irving Penn, Springs, New York, 1972. ©THE IRVING PENN FOUNDATION

Krasner teaches us a number of lessons.

1. Follow Your Instincts

‘I insist on letting it go the way it’s going to go rather than forcing it.’

Looking at Krasner’s paintings and listening to her talk on film, we realise that so often in life we over-ride our natural, instinctive feelings. She made a conscious effort to follow her impulses, to go with the flow.

2. Get Stuck In 

‘You just take a deep breath and hope for the best and get into it. And sometimes it comes through miraculously.’

Krasner comes across as a practical person. We often hesitate because we have not entirely thought through an idea. She believed that if you get stuck in, your instincts will take over. 

3. Embrace Change

‘I have never been able to understand the artist whose image never changes.’

Many artists seem to be in search of a consistent approach or signature style. Krasner actively embraced change, as a fundamental part of her identity. If she felt she was stuck in a rut, she would change the medium she was working in, change the context, change the materials.

‘I think every once in a while I feel the need to break my medium... If I have been doing a very large painting, I like to drop into something in small scale. It is a challenge to go into this size. It is just to hold my own interest, and then each media has its own conditions.’

4. Revisit Your Past

‘I am never free of the past. I believe in continuity.’

Having cannibalised her past in order to revitalise her present once in the mid-‘50s, Krasner did it again in the mid-‘70s. Coming across an old portfolio of her drawings from the Hofmann School, this time she set about cutting not tearing, arranging the angular shapes into dynamic patterns on the canvas, creating images that explode with shards of electricity.

Most artists would claim never to look back. Others preserve their past with reverence. Krasner demonstrated that your creative history can be a source of fresh inspiration.

‘This seems to be a work process of mine. I’m constantly going back to something I did earlier, remaking it, doing something else with it, and coming forth with another more clarified image possibly.’

5. Be Resilient

‘This student is always a bother… insists upon having own way, despite school rules.’
National Academy of Design Report Card

From an early age Krasner was strong willed and independent spirited. She had to be to navigate the sexism of the art world in her era. On one occasion her tutor Hans Hofmann, renowned for his harsh criticism, finally offered her a compliment:

'This is so good that you would not know it was done by a woman’. 

Krasner subsequently spent a lifetime fielding questions about her husband. In one interview she was asked: ‘What was Pollack working on during that period?’

‘I don’t know. I had my own problems.’

I left the Barbican admiring the artist as much as her art. Lee Krasner was certainly tough and serious minded. But she communicated a tremendous intimacy, opening a window to her soul. She didn’t receive the credit she was due in her day. It’s good to see the art establishment making amends.

‘Don’t tamper with that, don’t will it, don’t force it. Let it come through in its own terms.’

'Breathe to the rhythm,
Dance to the rhythm,
Work to the rhythm,
Live to the rhythm,
Love to the rhythm,
Slave to the rhythm.’

Grace Jones, ’Slave to the Rhythm’ (B Woolley/ S Darlow/ S Lipson /T Horn)

No. 238

Three Sisters: Dreams of Progress

The Wyndham Sisters by John Singer Sargent 1899

'It seems to me that everything is going to change little by little, that change is already under way, before our eyes. In two or three hundred years, perhaps in a thousand years, no matter how long, there will be a new, happy life. Of course, we will not be there any more, but that's why we live, work, suffer. We are creating that life - it's the only goal of our existence, and if you like, of our happiness.’ 
Vershinin, ‘Three Sisters’

I recently saw a fine production of Anton Chekhov’s ‘Three Sisters.’ (The Almeida Theatre, London, until 1 June) 

The Prozorov sisters live with their useless brother in a provincial town. Their parents have passed away and they feel isolated, lonely, cut adrift.

'For us, three sisters, life has not been beautiful - it chokes us, like weeds.' 

Older sister Olga is a spinster working long hours as a teacher. Middle sister Masha married young and is now dissatisfied with her husband Chebutykin:

Chebutykin: ‘I’m happy, happy, happy.’
Masha: ‘I’m bored, bored, bored.’

Irina, the youngest of the three, worries that love has passed her by:

'I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.’

The Prozorovs long for a return to Moscow where they grew up - for its culture and sophistication, its lively conversation about music, literature and language. Moscow represents everything they have loved and lost, everything they hope for in the future. As brother Andrey puts it:

'In Moscow you can sit in an enormous restaurant where you don’t know anybody and where nobody knows you, and yet you don’t feel that you’re a stranger. Here you know everybody and everybody knows you, and you’re a stranger... a lonely stranger.'

No one does very much in ‘Three Sisters.’ What action there is tends to happen off-stage. The characters spend most of the time gossiping, musing, philosophizing, taking another trip to the samovar. They are nostalgic, bored and wistful. They discuss the importance of work without doing very much of it. In particular they meditate on the meaning of life. What’s it all about? Why are we here? Why do we persevere when our daily existence seems so full of struggles and hardship? 

One of the houseguests, the nobleman Tuzenbakh, sees little sign of any progress or improvement in the human condition:

‘Life will remain the same as ever, not only after two or three centuries, but in a million years. Life does not change, it remains constant, following its own laws, which do not concern us, or which, at any rate, we will never discover. Migrant birds, cranes for example, fly and fly, and whatever thoughts, high or low, enter their heads, they will still fly on without knowing why or where to.’

Masha isn’t satisfied with this analysis:

Masha: 'Isn’t there some meaning?’
Tuzenbakh: 'Meaning? … Look out there, it’s snowing. What’s the meaning of that?’ 

Lieutenant-Colonel Vershinin, who has recently arrived in town as the local battery commander, offers a different perspective. He suggests that, despite its many challenges and disappointments, step by imperceptible step, society is moving forward, making advances. He illustrates this conviction by considering the plight of the three sisters:

'It goes without saying that you are not going to overcome the mass of ignorance around you. Little by little, as you advance in life, you will be obliged to yield and be swallowed up in the crowd of a hundred thousand human beings. Life will stifle you. But you will all the same not have disappeared without having made an impact. After you there will be perhaps only six women like you, then twelve, and so on, until finally you will become the majority. In two or three hundred years life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, amazing, astonishing.’ 

Masha, who yearns to believe in something, gradually falls for the charms of the battery commander:

Cover of first edition, published 1901

’First I thought he was strange, then I was sorry for him…then I fell in love with him.’

I found myself sympathising with the arguments of both Tuzenbakh and Vershinin. Like Tuzenbakh I accept that the human condition is timeless and we must take solace in the small things just to get us through the day: in modest kindnesses and friendly gestures, in the comedy of circumstance and the charms of nature. But like Vershinin I still believe that, in the long run, with industry and collective effort, society can move forward.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe in progress. At work we are confronted with contracting opportunities and intractable problems: increasing hours, decreasing job security, automation, discrimination, stress and procurement. 

More broadly in the world today we are beset by political turmoil, economic inequality, rampant populism, escalating terrorism, technology’s dark shadow and environmental decay. Everywhere we look we see difficulty and defeat, thwarted hope and disappointed ambition. Sometimes it seems that our best years are behind us. 

And yet, like Vershinin, I think it’s important to retain an optimistic view. We can pull through if we keep our heads to the sky. Confronted with impediments and reverses, Dr Martin Luther King and President Obama were inclined to quote the nineteenth century abolitionist preacher Theodore Parker:

'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ 

Sadly things do not work out well for the Prozorov sisters. Before the play is over there is tragedy, frustration, compromise. And it doesn’t seem like they will make it to Moscow any time soon. Vershinin reflects mournfully on life’s challenges and disappointments:

'I often think, what if one were to begin life over again, but consciously? What if one life, the life already lived, were only a rough sketch so to speak, and the second were the fair copy?’

'Don't give up and don't give in,
Although it seems you never win.
You will always pass the test,
As long as you keep your head to the sky.
You can win as long as you keep your head to the sky.
Be optimistic.’

Sounds of Blackness, ‘Optimistic' (G Hines / J Harris / T Lewis)

No. 230

Gainsborough’s Daughters: Even Hard Nosed Business People Can Have Soft Centres

Thomas Gainsborough - The Painter's Daughters with a Cat. Circa 1760-1. Courtesy of The Nation Gallery

I confess I’ve not been the greatest fan of Thomas Gainsborough. All those flattering portraits of lords, ladies and the landed gentry; of stout colonels, fashionable celebrities and bewigged countesses. All those haughty looks, formidable stares, self-satisfied glances. Gainsborough was clearly a gifted artist. With his fast, light-handed brushstrokes, he elegantly captured the confident swagger of eighteenth century English society. But to me his pictures displayed little warmth or psychological insight.

I may have misjudged him.

I recently attended an exhibition of Gainsborough’s family portraits. (‘Gainsborough’s Family Album’, the National Portrait Gallery, London, until 3 February.)

Gainsborough was the first British artist regularly to paint himself and his family members. Although he claimed to prefer landscape painting to the portraiture that made his name and paid his keep, these intimate works were a labour of love. Many were unfinished. Perhaps he liked to tinker away at them in his spare time. Perhaps he just preferred them that way.

With her rosy cheeks and black mantilla, Gainsborough’s wife Margaret looks somewhat long-suffering and resigned. In her white lace bow and bonnet, older sister Sarah, a milliner, suggests intelligence and determination. Artist nephew Gainsborough Dupont appears in a blue silk jacket, all handsome and romantic. Clerical brother Humphrey seems sincere and devout. Older brother John, unshaven with unruly hair, comes across as something of a rogue. Nicknamed ‘Scheming Jack’, John was endlessly pursuing ill-fated money-making projects. The picture is inscribed ‘Gainsborow’.

Thomas Gainsborough -The Painter's Daughters chasing a Butterfly. Circa 1756. Courtesy of The Nation Gallery

Gainsborough portrays his family as ordinary middle-class folk with characterful faces and stories to tell; interesting people in everyday attire, with varied preoccupations and concerns.

I was particularly struck by a sequence of paintings, created over many years, of Gainsborough’s two daughters. Margaret, aged 5, reaches for a butterfly, and 6-year-old Mary grasps her hand to protect her from an unseen thistle bush. A few years later Mary puts a comforting arm around her sister’s shoulder as she cradles a cat. Then Mary adjusts Margaret’s hair as she stares out at us, slightly annoyed perhaps. The two teenage sisters earnestly contemplate their art studies. The two society ladies in their twenties rejoice in their silk finery, attended by a faithful hound.

Seen through the paintings he made of his daughters, Gainsborough comes across, not as a sycophantic lover of celebrity elites, but rather as a protective, thoughtful and affectionate father. He wants the best for his girls. He believes in them.

I found myself rather liking this Gainsborough.

In the world of business we are sometimes quick to dismiss colleagues, competitors and clients as villains and fools. We leap to assumptions, jump to conclusions. We readily characterize people as simple-minded, selfish and soulless.

But we may simply have approached from the wrong angle, got off on the wrong foot. Often hard-nosed commercial people have soft centres; sometimes cool, calculating exteriors conceal tender, warm-hearted interior lives.

You just need to ask the right questions.

Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of the Artist's Daughters, about 1763-64. Courtesy of Worcester Art Museum

As so often in life, things didn’t quite turn out for Gainsborough’s daughters as he or they had hoped. The young women didn’t pursue an artistic career. Aged 30 Mary married a musician, but it didn’t work out and she returned home two years later. Her mental health deteriorated, and Margaret, who never married, took care of her in seclusion in Acton. When Margaret passed away, Mary was committed to an asylum where she stayed for the rest of her life. 

Thomas Gainsborough himself died from cancer in 1788 at the age of 61. In his last letter he wrote, somewhat wistfully:

‘’Tis odd how all the childish passions hang about one in sickness. I am so childish that I could make a kite, catch gold finches, or build little ships.'

No. 214