The Amnesiac Industry: If We Have No Memory of the Past, We Can Have No Vision for the Future

‘Mnemonic’ at the National Theatre Photo: Johan Persson 

‘Mnemonic’ is a play about memory and migration, ancestry and storytelling. (The National Theatre, London, until 10 August).

The body of a man has been discovered under Tyrolean ice. It turns out to have been preserved for over 5,000 years. How did the Iceman get there? Where did he come from? Was he a shaman or a shepherd, a victim of a patriarchal challenge, or of a pogrom?  

A woman disappears on the morning of her mother’s funeral. She has set off on an odyssey across Europe, in search of the father she never knew.

Her partner, left behind in London, desperately tries to make sense of it all.

A 1999 work by the Complicité theatre company, ‘Mnemonic’ was conceived and is directed by Simon McBurney. This imaginative, layered production uses props and visual effects to take us on a speeding train, into bars and bedrooms, and up to an Alpine ridge. We are invited to don a mask and feel a dead leaf. We meet migrants living in London suburbs. And an articulated chair plays a starring role. We are prompted to reflect on the interconnectivity of our pasts and futures; on the fundamental human need for narratives.

In particular, the play asks us to consider memory.

‘Memory is a pattern. Of electrical synaptic connections. Each time you remember, your brain has to re-make this pattern. It is a creative act, and it happens at a speed no computer can match. But the memory is different each time. And because the pattern can never be exactly the same, so it is… an imaginative act. Remembering is about discarding and choosing, forgetting and creating, losing and finding, dismantling and simultaneously re-making.’

Simon McBurney

‘Mnemonic’ begins with a discussion of a celebrated neuroscience case. (Also outlined in the Programme Notes by Daphna Shohamy, Professor of Brain Science at Colombia University.) In the 1950s a man underwent surgery for a severe condition of epilepsy. The surgeon removed his hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure behind each ear. The patient recovered well - his past memories, language, reasoning and sense of self remaining intact. But he lost the ability to create new memories.

‘[Subsequent research has established that] Patients with hippocampal damage struggle not just with new memories, but also with imagining the future. When asked to envision future events – such as plans for next weekend, or their next birthday party – their minds draw a blank.’
Daphna Shohamy

I was struck with this thought that our memories determine our capacity to imagine the future.

The communications industry proudly proclaims its talent for predicting, managing and creating change. It positions itself firmly in the future, always looking forward to the next horizon; to tomorrow’s world.

But it tends not to be so expert in the past, rarely reflecting on historic models, case studies and thinking; seldom studying the learnings of previous generations.  

It is an amnesiac industry. And as such it is constrained in its ability to progress at pace, and cursed continually to re-make past mistakes.

I’d advise young strategists to be historians as much as forecasters. I’d encourage them to read Paul Feldwick’s analysis of how different eras have understood advertising effectiveness (‘The Anatomy of Humbug’); to consider old D&AD, APG and IPA Effectiveness annuals; to talk to veteran practitioners; to visit the History of Advertising Trust.

Because if we have no memory of the past, we can have no vision for the future.

'Did we give up too soon?
Maybe we needed just a little room.
Wondering how it all happened,
Maybe we just need a little time.
Though we did end as friends,
Given the chance we could love again.
She'll always love you forever,
It's not hard to believe.
I want you and I need you so I’m...
Sending you forget me nots,
To help me to remember.
Baby please forget me not,
I want you to remember.’
Patrice Rushen, ‘Forget Me Nots’ (P Rushen, T McFaddin, F Washington)

No. 480

Skeleton Crew: ‘People Don’t Know How to Merge’

Pamela Nomvete as Faye. Photo - Helen Murray

‘Skeleton Crew’ by Dominique Morisseau (directed by Matthew Xia, at the Donmar Warehouse, London until 24 August) considers the impact of industrial decline on communities and individuals.
 
Faye: I don’t abide by no rules but necessity. I do what I do till I figure out another thing and do that.

The play is set in 2008, in the breakroom of one of the last small car plants operating in Detroit. There’s a microwave and a refrigerator, a tatty couch and crates of kitchen supplies. The heating has packed up and the bulletin board screams instructions.

‘FRIDGE EMPTIED EVERY FRIDAY’
‘NO GAMBLING ON THE PREMISES. DEZ, THIS MEANS YOU.’
‘YOU SEE YOUR MAMA HERE? NO? THEN CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF!’

Between shifts, the workers change shoes at their lockers, prepare themselves some food and coffee, and talk around the table. Dez (Branden Cook), a smart young hustler, charms his colleagues and plans for the future. Shanita (Racheal Ofori), diligent and  thoughtful, does everything by the book. She loves her work.

Shanita: I feel like I’m building somethin’ important. Love the way the line needs me. Like if I step away for even a second and don’t ask somebody to mind my post, the whole operation has to stop. My touch…my special care…it matter. I’m building something that you can see come to life at the end. Got a motor in it and it’s gonna take somebody somewhere. Gonna maybe drive some important businessman to work. Gonna get some single mama to her son’s football practice. Gonna take a family on their first trip to Cedar Point. Gonna even maybe be somebody’s first time. Who knows? But I like knowing I had a hand in it.  

And then there’s Faye (Pamela Nomvete), the formidable veteran with ‘a lifetime of dirt between her nails.’ She ignores the strictures against on-site smoking and gambling, and dishes out sarcasm and worldly wisdom.

Faye: Ya’ll youngins don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout how to fix up no car. Treat ‘em ‘bout as dumb as you treat women. Put a bunch of pretty jewelry on her – gold rims – trick out her exterior, and on the inside, she ain’t got nothin’ to run on. No care. No substance. Just put all your attention on the shit that don’t matter. That ain’t how to make her purr like you really want.  

The autoworkers speculate about the reduced staffing on the lines and the recent spate of plant machinery thefts. They wonder whether the site is at risk of closure.

Dez: Rumors ‘bout shuttin’ down been circulating every year. Then it go away. That’s just how it is. Can’t worry ‘bout it. Cuz if it don’t happen you done worried for nothin’. And if it do happen, you done worried twice.

We learn how the threatened shutdown impacts each of the characters differently. Reggie (Tobi Bamtefa), the studious foreman with neat hair and a white buttoned-down shirt, has bought a house in a good area and settled his kids in a new school. Dez has been saving up to start his own repair shop, and desperately needs his wage and overtime. Faye is well aware that her retirement package will be significantly better if she can just make it to 30 years’ service.

Faye: Told you, don’t be listening to rumors. You inhale every rumor, you clog up your lungs. Die of asphyxiation of other people’s bullshit.

We also come to appreciate that the characters’ concerns are compounded by their own particular personal challenges. Faye has been sleeping overnight in the breakroom. Shanita is pregnant and periodically bursts in in tears. Dez keeps a gun in his locker.

Dez: Need me a good severance deal…if…shit goes down.
Faye: If ‘if’ was a spliff, we’d all be high.

Racheal Ofori as Shanita. Photo - Helen Murray

As the play proceeds, all these ingredients simmer and come to the boil. We are presented with a compelling case study in the dignity of labour; the social cohesion created by industrial jobs, and destroyed by wholesale layoffs; and the resourcefulness and grit of working people.

As a young Planner I was taught that one of the fundamental responsibilities of advertising was to keep the factories open; to keep the lines moving; to sustain jobs. It’s worth being reminded of that occasionally.

I was particularly taken with a speech made by Shanita after a tough commute to the factory.

Shanita: This whole city is under construction. That’s what I discovered on my way into work today. Traffic on the 75 was crazy. They done took everything down to one lane. And people don’t know how to merge. Cars backed up for miles cuz people don’t know how to merge. Don’t matter what freeway you take, it be the same selfish behaviour on all of ‘em. Everybody got somewhere to be and don’t wanna let you in. Even when you honk at ‘em. Even when you try to smile pretty and be polite with it. That shit used to work at one point. I could always squeeze into a lane with a smile. But not no more. Nobody wants to merge no more. We just gettin’ squished into smaller lanes while they make these promises to fix the freeways and don’t seem like they ever really get fixed. And at the end of the day, we just hate drivin’ with each other cuz ain’t enough space and assholes don’t wanna let you in. All I can think anymore is if we just merged, shit would flow so much better.

The world is more fragmented, individualistic and isolating than at any time in human history. And yet we are stronger together - in life generally, and in work specifically.  

We need to remember how to merge.

'Gotta find me an angel
To fly away with me.
Gotta find me an angel
And set me free.
My heart is without a home,
I don't want to be alone.
I gotta find me an angel
In my life, in my life.
Too long have I loved,
So unattached within.
So much that I know
That I need somebody so.
So I'll just go on
Hoping that I find me someone.
Gotta find me an angel
In my life, in my life.
I know there must be someone
Somewhere for me.
Oh, I've lived too long
Without the love of someone.
And there's no misery
Like the misery
I feel in me.
Gotta find me an angel
In my life.’
Aretha Franklin, ‘Angel’ (C A Franklin / William N Sanders)

No. 479

Karaoke Strategy: Always Rehearse in Private Before You Perform in Public

Everett Shinn ‘Revue’ 1908

I confess I’m partial to a bit of karaoke.

I like the theatre of it, the amateurishness and enthusiasm. I like the cozy intimacy of the booth, the excited loading of the playlist, the sporadic arrival of the drink orders. I like it when Michelle sings Carly Simon, and Mike channels Bowie, and everyone joins in on the chorus to ‘Life on Mars.’ I like the muffled thunder of people chanting ‘Wonderwall’ next door. I like the way it celebrates both individuality and community; the way it helps everyone to remember and forget.

I’m only a moderate singer, but I enjoy joining in. And I have learned that it’s best to come to karaoke armed with a few tunes up your sleeve.

And so, when I was recently invited to a karaoke evening, I was prompt to perform my version of Orange Juice’s ‘Rip It Up.’ I know I can deliver this with a decent impersonation of Edwyn Collins’ refined vocal stylings, and with the added value of my awkward ‘80s dance-steps.

'When I first saw you,
Something stirred within me,
You were standing sultry in the rain.
If I could have held you,
I would have held you.
Rip it up and start again.’
Orange Juice, ‘Rip It Up’ (S R Greenaway / T W Collins)

Before too long, my slot at the microphone came round again, and I turned to another old favourite: Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘The Last Waltz’. I’ve long been charmed by its crooning evocation of 1960s dancehalls. It’s true, I struggle somewhat with the high notes. But it’s such a romantic sentiment that I’m sure no one notices…

'I wondered should I go or should I stay,
The band had only one more song to play.
And then I saw you out the corner of my eye,
A little girl, alone and so shy.
I had the last waltz with you,
Two lonely people together.
I fell in love with you,
The last waltz should last forever.’
Engelbert Humperdinck, 'The Last Waltz’ (J B Mason / L D Reed)

As the evening wore on, my supply of known numbers was running out. I couldn’t find my signature song, The Smiths’ ‘Please, Please, Please,’ on the machine. And I was conscious that my picks had, to this point, been somewhat antique.

Karaoke is very much about self-expression, not just in the way that you perform, but in the songs you select. Perhaps my repertoire was betraying my late-Boomer life-stage.

Now the microphone was coming round to me again. What was I to do? Maybe I should choose something more current and contemporary; something that demonstrated I was still in touch with popular culture?

I’ve always had a soft spot for Lana Del Ray’s melancholic chansons noires, and in particular her 2011 classic ‘Video Games.’ I’d not sung this before, but it seemed in a low enough register, and, at that particular moment, lubricated a little by industrial Malbec, I was sure I could give it a go…

Sadly, when the tune came up, I discovered that, in truth, I only really knew the chorus. As the lyrics scrolled by, I sought desperately for some residual recollection of a melody. To no avail. And so I delivered most of the song in a rather awkward monotone. This was more woeful butchery than wistful beauty.  

I sensed the audience’s attention waning, switching to the next item on the playlist, to the next singer on the stage.  

I had failed.

'It's you, it's you, it's all for you,
Everything I do.
I tell you all the time,
Heaven is a place on earth with you.
Tell me all the things you wanna do.
I heard that you like the bad girls.
Honey, is that true?’
Lana Del Ray, ‘Video Games’ (E Grant / J Parker)

I guess the conclusion here is that we should never attempt a karaoke tune without previously establishing that it is within our skillset - that we can perform the verse and the bridge, as well as the chorus. Preparation pays.

As in karaoke, so in life and work. We are often encouraged to follow our intuition, to trust our gut. But I think we should only do this up to a point.

Once we have listened to our heart, we should then pay heed to the practicalities; run through the rationalities. We should always rehearse in private before we perform in public.

For my last number I decided to return to more familiar territory. I belted out Elton John’s ‘Your Song’ with relief and recognition. Yes, I was playing it safe. But I’m a man of a certain age, of limited vocal talents. I’m comfortable with that. And you can tell everybody, that this is my song.   

‘It's a little bit funny,
This feeling inside.
I'm not one of those who can easily hide.
I don't have much money, but boy if I did,
I'd buy a big house where we both could live.
And you can tell everybody
This is your song.
It may be quite simple, but
Now that it's done.
I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind,
That I put down in words,
How wonderful life is
While you're in the world.’
Elton John, ‘Your Song’ (B Taupin, E John)

No. 478

Billy Wilder: ‘Nobody Can Portray What the Audience Can Imagine’

Billy Wilder

'If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.'
Billy Wilder

I recently watched a couple of extended interviews with the legendary film-maker Billy Wilder. (‘Billy, How Did You Do It?’ (1992), Volker Schlondorff; ‘The Writer Speaks: Billy Wilder’ (1995), The Writers Guild Foundation)

'I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.'

Born into a Jewish family in a small town in Poland in 1906, Wilder was raised in Vienna and found work as a journalist and screenwriter in Berlin. After the Nazis’ rise to power, he moved briefly to Paris, before relocating to Hollywood in 1934. His mother, grandmother and stepfather were all victims of the Holocaust. 

‘Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.’

Having learned English from scratch, Wilder co-wrote ‘Ninotchka’ (1939), the film where Garbo laughed, and ‘Ball of Fire’(1941), one of the great screwball comedies. He then took to directing, so that he could better control his vision.

‘People ask me if directors should also be able to write. I say to them: ‘What is important is that he is able to read.’’

Wilder went on to co-write and direct ‘Double Indemnity’ (1944), the prototype film noir; ‘The Lost Weekend’ (1945), the first movie to take alcoholism seriously; and ‘Sunset Boulevard’(1950), the definitive Hollywood expose. He filmed ‘Stalag 17’ (1953), the archetypal prisoner-of-war movie, and ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ (1957), the classic courtroom drama. He shone a spotlight on the cynicism of the press in ‘Ace in the Hole’ (1951). And he made us laugh like drains with ‘Some Like It Hot’ (1959) and ‘The Apartment’ (1960). Over six decades he created more than fifty films and won seven Academy Awards.

'An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.’

In the interviews the elderly film-maker, still with an Austrian accent, looks back on his extraordinary career with authority, insight and a twinkle in his eye. Let us consider some of the lessons he imparts.

'Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.’

Wilder on the set of Double Indemnity (1944)

 1. Don’t Bore People

Wilder was at heart a popular entertainer. He wasn’t interested in arthouse credibility.

'Some pictures play wonderfully to a room of eight people. I don't go for that. I go for the masses. I go for the end effect.’

For Wilder the greatest crime was to be tedious.

'The Wilder message is don't bore - don't bore people.’

2. Start with the Architecture

Wilder’s films crossed many genres. They were characterised by tightly woven, intricate plots and dramatic reversals; by sharp dialogue and simple, elegant direction.  

‘Writing a movie is a mixture of architecture and poetry.’

Every twist and turn in the plot is carefully choreographed. Every scene is engineered like a Swiss timepiece.

‘The film has to be very precisely constructed, but the construction must not show.’

In ‘Double Indemnity’ (1944) a perfectly planned crime is undone by a car that fails to start. Expecting a rendezvous with his lover, the murderer is surprised by a visit from his boss. Counter to convention, a door opens onto a corridor, just so as to give Barbara Stanwyck somewhere to hide.
 
‘We have to find the mechanics and then write the scenes hiding the mechanics.’

Wilder was prepared to sacrifice great material if it didn’t serve the overall narrative. ‘Sunset Boulevard’(1950) was originally shot with an opening scene in the city morgue. In previews the audience burst out laughing when an identity tag was attached to a dead William Holden’s toe. Though Wilder loved the sequence, he cut it because it was setting the wrong mood.

3. Create Great Moments that Shake the House

Wilder was always thinking about audience attention.

‘Once you have the audience captured – once they are playing that game with the people on the screen – this is like you’ve got them by the throat, you can’t let it go. You squeeze a little more and more and more. Don’t let them escape. Don’t wake them up. Don’t let them realise this is only a movie that they’re seeing.’

And so he peppered his films with climactic moments. 

‘The strength of a film comes from those great moments that shake the house.’

As illustration of these mini-climaxes, he cites the rotten meat scene in Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’ (1925); the hitchhiker sequence in Capra’s ‘It Happened One Night’ (1934); the four-fingers reveal in Hitchcock’s ’The 39 Steps’ (1935).

'An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.'

Wilder on the set of The Apartment (1960) with Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon

4. Laughter Snowballs

Wilder was particularly attuned to the rhythm required for comedy.

‘In order to get laughs, you first have to create an atmosphere…One sporadic laugh and then nothing for 5 minutes is worse than no laughter at all. [Laughter] snowballs.’

For the final scene between Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in ‘Some Like It Hot’ (1959), Wilder gave Lemmon a pair of maracas and got him to shake them after each gag. He did this to create space for audience laughter before Curtis delivered his next straight line.

The movie ends with Lemmon revealing his secret to his wealthy suitor.

Jerry: But you don't understand, Osgood! [pulls off his wig]… I'm a man!
Osgood: [shrugs] Well, nobody's perfect!

5. The Public Has to Add It Up

Wilder's first significant success in Hollywood came when he collaborated with Ernst Lubitsch on ‘Ninotchka’ (1939). The great German director taught him to let the audience work some things out for themselves.

‘Lubitsch was not afraid that people won’t understand him. Unlike people that say 2 + 2 makes 4, 1 + 3 also makes 4, 1+1+1+1 also makes 4. But Lubitsch says 2+2…That’s it. The public has to add it up.’

And so Wilder relates his stories with subtlety and a light touch. He advises, for instance, never to show a character having an idea.

'It’s too difficult to act and it’s very difficult to believe.’

Similarly, the murder in ‘Double Indemnity’ (1944) is not shown on screen. Rather, it is conveyed by a slight move of Barbara Stanwyck’s head as she drives the car in which it takes place.

'Emotions that are of startling strength, or vehement reactions, are best shot and acted by an actor with the back to the camera. Nobody can portray what the audience can imagine.’

Wilder on set

6. The Best Director Is the One You Don’t See

Wilder was first and foremost a writer, and his filmic style always served the script. 

'How do you make sure they understand what you want to tell them? How do you direct their eyes to that thing? How do you make them remember? The subtler you are, the more elegantly you do it, the better a director you are.’

His complex narratives required simple direction.

‘There are only two kinds of film for the public. The simple story padded out, furnished in rococo. The simple plot allows visual embellishment. Then the complex story filmed simply, in order to make it comprehensible. But if it’s complicated and you also make arabesques, then the audience won’t understand.’

Wilder was no fan of technical tricks and imaginative camera angles.

‘I shot fast with as few camera positions as possible. Good positions, interesting positions. But nothing…tricky. If they notice the camera you’re lost…The best director is the one you don't see… Shoot the son-of-a-bitch and let’s go home’

7. It’s Much Easier to Say ‘Do Less’ than ‘Do Something’

Wilder had a particular talent for getting great performances from his actors. Fourteen of the stars he directed were Oscar-nominated, including Barbara Stanwyck, Audrey Hepburn and Charles Laughton; Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Walter Matthau. 

‘A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.’

He often cast against type, enlisting tough guy James Cagney for a comedy role, and Disney hero William Holden to play a villain. He worked with Marilyn Monroe on two of her best pictures.

'An endless puzzle without any solution.’
 
In ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (1950) Wilder cast Gloria Swanson as a silent era film idol desperate for a return to the spotlight. Swanson, a silent star herself, had virtually given up cinema, and some warned him that her traditional acting style was too expressive. But that’s what Wilder wanted from the role.
 
‘It’s much easier to say ‘do less’ than ‘do something.’’

8. Keep Some Ideas in the Bottom Drawer 

Watching David Lean’s romance ‘Brief Encounter’ (1945), in which a couple conduct a tryst in a friend’s flat, Wilder was prompted to ponder:

‘What about the man who has to crawl back into his warm bed?’

He wrote a 5-page outline and popped it in a drawer filled with assorted first acts, characters and scenes.

Some years later Wilder was so enjoying working with Jack Lemmon on ‘Some Like It Hot’ (1959) that he determined he had to collaborate with him again. But on what? He went to his bottom drawer and pulled out the 5-page outline that would eventually become ‘The Apartment’ (1960).

Wilder with IAL Diamond

9. Approach Creative Collaboration Like Bank Tellers

Wilder’s writing career was marked by two significant partnerships: with Charles Brackett from 1936 to 1950; and with IAL Diamond from 1957 to 1981. 

Here Wilder describes his working routine with Diamond.

‘When you think of two guys writing a screenplay, what comes to mind? You visualise two crazies screaming at each other, or dancing on the furniture when they have come up with what they think is a doozy. Iz and I, we’re more like bank tellers. We open the shop at 9-30. There was a quick exchange of ‘morning’, ‘morning.’ I would sit behind my desk and he would slouch in the black Eames chair, his feet on the ottoman. He would be chewing gum or sucking on a toothpick - anything not to smoke too much. Sometimes the muses would come and whip our brow and we would whip up 10 or 12 pages a day, his on the typewriter and me with the yellow pad. There was no arm twisting, no pulling rank, no shouting, no screams of ecstasy because one came up with an idea that was maybe not too bad. The highest accolade you could get out of Iz was: ‘Why not?’’

10. Don’t Delude Yourself

Wilder was happy to acknowledge that even a talented film-maker gets it wrong sometimes. The key is to make an honest mistake, and to follow it with a hit.

‘Having been at it for a long time, I don’t delude myself. Usually when a picture doesn’t work, you go round and you say it was ahead of its time, the release was too close to Christmas, the release of the picture was too close after Christmas because people had spent their money on presents. The picture was a failure because there was so much sun and people wanted to go to the beach. And then it was a failure because it rained and nobody’s on the streets. All kind of excuses…’
 
Wilder gained his final Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of 'The Fortune Cookie' (1966), the first film pairing Jack Lemmon with Walter Matthau. But as the ‘60s turned into the ‘70s, he felt increasingly uncomfortable with the fashion for technical wizardry and special effects; with the spiralling cost of film production and the consequential conservatism. Most of his movies were made on budgets of between $800 and 900k.

'Most of the pictures they make nowadays are loaded down with special effects. I couldn't do that. I quit smoking because I couldn't reload my Zippo… They don't want to see a picture unless Peter Fonda is running over a dozen people, or unless Clint Eastwood has got a machine gun bigger than 140 penises. It gets bigger all the time, you know. It started out as a pistol, and now it's a machine gun. Something which is warm and funny and gentle and urbane and civilized hasn't got a chance today. There is a lack of patience which is sweeping the nation - or the world, for that matter.’

Wilder’s later films failed to impress critics or the public. In 1976 he remarked:

'They say Wilder is out of touch with his times. Frankly, I regard it as a compliment. Who the hell wants to be in touch with these times?’

He died aged 95 in 2002, leaving a legacy of some of the most entertaining films in Hollywood history. His gravestone reads:

‘I’m a writer. But then nobody’s perfect.’

'Isn't it romantic?
Music in the night, a dream that can be heard.
Isn't it romantic?
Moving shadows write the oldest magic word.
I hear the breezes playing in the trees above,
While all the world is saying you were meant for love.
Isn't it romantic?
Merely to be young on such a night as this?
Isn't it romantic?
Every note that's sung is like a lover's kiss.
Sweet symbols in the moonlight.
Do you mean that I will fall in love perchance?
Isn't it romance?
Sweet symbols in the moonlight.
Do you mean that I will fall in love perchance?
Isn't it romantic?
Isn't it romance?’

Mel Torme, 'Isn’t it Romantic?' (R Rodgers, L Hart)

No. 477

‘Line!’: When Words Fail You

Mary Cassatt, In the Loge

I recently attended the very first night of a new production at the theatre.

The lead actor was having terrible trouble remembering his lines.

You could see it in his fixed concentration; in the way he stared straight ahead, not responding to the other performers. You could hear it in his hesitations; in the unusual rhythm of his delivery.

There was clearly only one thought on his mind:

‘What’s my next line? What’s my next line? What’s my next line?’

And then, eventually, the inevitable happened: words failed him.

There was a brief pause, a stunned silence, and, with a look of defeat, he called out into the darkness:

‘Line!’

A voice from off-stage read a prompt in a flat voice.

The actor continued, somewhat disconsolate. And we spent the rest of the play willing him to make it to the end.

Poor bloke.

'Happiness: being able to forget or, to express in a more learned fashion.'
Friedrich Nietzsche

I found myself imagining how splendid it would be if, in everyday life, one could summon an elegant phrase, a witty remark, an insightful comment, with the simple exclamation of the word ‘Line!’ 

Alas we are reduced to the ‘inarticulate speech of the heart.’

I was also reminded of the times at work when I was completely tongue tied - occasions that haunt my dreams to this day.

It’s a critical meeting, a pivotal pitch. I’m well drilled and thoroughly rehearsed. I’m up for the challenge, ready for the test. All eyes are upon me.

And yet suddenly my mouth dries, my vision blurs and my mind empties.

What on earth was I planning to say here?

Over the years I established that the best response to forgetting one’s lines is to set aside the script; to improvise and ad lib; to look to your team.

Sometimes a fumbled explanation can come across as more authentic; a muddled articulation can seem more personal, more heartfelt, than a precisely worded, pre-scripted, line.

Every stumble is not a fall.

'The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society—and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding.'
William H Whyte

The morning after my trip to the theatre, I related the story of the actor who forgot his lines to Doriano at his coffee van. I observed that it was all a little melancholy, because the performer was an elderly gentleman. His memory must be failing.  

I set off back home, only to be summoned back by Doriano. I’d forgotten to take my latte with me…


’Inarticulate speech, inarticulate speech of the heart.
I'm a soul in wonder.
I'm a soul in wonder.
Inarticulate speech, inarticulate speech of the heart.
I'm a soul in wonder.
A soul in wonder.'

Van Morrison, 'Inarticulate Speech of the Heart No. 2'

No. 476

Now You See Us: Buried Treasure and Hidden Gems

Mary Grace - Self portrait 1760’s . Oil on canvas

'Now You See Us’ at the Tate Britain, London (until 13 October) celebrates over 100 women artists who worked in Britain between 1520 and 1920. The exhibition presents paintings, pastels, needlework, photography and sculpture, that for the most part have been little known and rarely seen.

Here you’ll find Mary Beale’s glamorous depictions of 18th century society ladies, and a rather tender sketch that she made of her young son, his curly tresses tumbling to his shoulders. And there’s Mary Grace, whose only surviving painting is a self-portrait. In a fine primrose silk dress, she sits bolt upright, a palette resting on one arm, and regards us with stern authority.

Through the Looking-Glass, by Louise Jopling, 1875, acquired by the Tate. Photograph: Tate

In the 19th century rooms, Rosa Bonheur takes us to the Highlands, to mournful sheep grazing under a stormy sky. Elizabeth Forbes presents a naturalistic image of a farm labourer, head turned to the floor, in quiet conversation with a young woman at the edge of the woods - terribly romantic. And with its bold brushstrokes and flat appearance, Louise Jopling’s self-portrait suggests a Mancunian Manet.

There’s a good deal of buried treasure here, and many hidden gems.

Elizabeth Forbes - The Edge of the Woods

As we progress through the galleries, we also learn of the many hurdles women artists had to overcome.

For the most part, they were subject, first to their fathers, and then their husbands, limited to the domestic sphere. Having no access to apprenticeships, art was a private, amateur pursuit, one that was only available to the higher social orders, or those related to male artists. Their lives and work were poorly documented.

In 1768 Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser became founding members of the Royal Academy (along with 32 men). However, when Johann Zoffany memorialised the new institution with a group picture of the Academicians at a life class, Kauffman and Moser were reduced to two indistinct portraits on the back wall - women were barred from life classes on the grounds of propriety. It would take more than 150 years for the next woman to be elected to membership.

Johan Zoffany - The Academicians of the Royal Academy, 1771-1772

There was a commonly held view that women were best suited to ‘imitation’ rather than invention. Miniatures, pastels and watercolours, sectors in which women thrived, were treated dismissively as ‘lower arts’ by the establishment. In 1770, the Royal Academy banned from its exhibitions ‘needle-work, artificial flowers, cut paper, shell-work, or any such baubles’. Joshua Reynolds, the Academy’s President, remarked that working in pastel was ‘just what ladies do when they paint for their own amusement.’

Nevertheless, they persisted. Between 1760 and 1830 some 900 women exhibited at public shows.

Flower painting was considered an appropriate artform for women. Mary Gartside created sublime floral watercolours, whilst at the same time pioneering colour theory. Mary Delany’s collages of spider lilies and flowering raspberry - made with coloured paper placed on black backgrounds (what she called her ‘paper mosaicks’) - are exquisite.

Mary Delany Rubus Odoratus 1772-1782 The British Museum

Gradually in the Victorian era women artists found new galleries, exhibition spaces and events that were less conservative than the Royal Academy. At the same time, they campaigned for access to training, governance and awards. Florence Claxton’s ‘Woman’s Work’ of 1861 shows some women fawning at the feet of a pompous man who sits under a false idol. Other women meanwhile are confined behind ‘the ancient wall of Custom and Prejudice,’ and the door to the medical profession is locked. Only one female artist, Rosa Bonheur, has climbed a ladder to view the ‘forbidden fruit’ beyond.

Florence Claxton, Women's Work, 1861

Founded in 1871, the Slade School of Fine Art in London offered women an education on equal terms with men, and, at last, access to life classes. Soon women students outnumbered men by three to one.

As we enter the 20th century rooms, and the progress towards broader freedoms, we see work from artists who have become more familiar to us: Gwen John, Laura Knight, Vanessa Bell, Nina Hamnet, Helen Saunders. Still, some of these magnificent painters have taken a century to receive proper recognition.

Leaving the exhibition, one can’t help thinking about wasted talent. So many remarkable artists unseen and unacknowledged. So many great works neglected and ignored.We may also be prompted to reflect on the world of work. Are our biases blinding us to untapped abilities and underutilised expertise? Are we failing to realise the true potential of the human capital at our disposal? Are we still missing out on buried treasure and hidden gems?

'I believe talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it. Electricity makes no judgment. You can plug into it and light up a lamp, keep a heart pump going, light a cathedral, or you can electrocute a person with it. Electricity will do all that. It makes no judgment. I think talent is like that. I believe every person is born with talent.'
Maya Angelou

'The most as you'll ever go
Is back where you used to know.
If grown-ups could laugh this slow
Where as you watch the hour snow,
Years may go by.
So hold on to your special friend.
Here, you'll need something to keep her in:
"Now you stay inside this foolish grin"
Though any day your secrets end.
Then again,
Years may go by.’

Rickie Lee Jones, 'On Saturday Afternoons In 1963’

No. 475

‘Will It Paint?’: John Singer Sargent and the Semiotics of Style

John Singer Sargent - Lord Ribblesdale

I recently visited an exhibition considering the importance of clothes and costume in the portraits of John Singer Sargent. (‘Sargent and Fashion’ is at the Tate Britain, London until 7 July.)

The show is a celebration of sensuous silks and satins; of long buttoned bodices and pleated organza skirts; of Chesterfield coats, velvet jackets and crimson dressing gowns. Sargent captures the play of light and shadow across garments, their undulating creases and folds. He revels in the detail of a black tulle dress, a scarlet cape and a mauve sash; the elegance of a Chantilly fan, an antique lace collar and a Kashmiri shawl.

The exhibition prompts us to reflect on the coded language of fashion, the semiotics of style.

Sargent was born to American parents in Florence in 1856. As a child he lived in several European countries, before training and establishing his artistic reputation in Paris.

In 1882 Sargent was so taken with fellow American-in-Paris, the beautiful Virginie Gautreau, that he convinced her to pose for a life-size portrait without a commission. He presented her in a long black evening gown with a plunging neckline, her arms and neck bare, her face turned to one side in a classical pose – and with one of the jewelled dress straps slipping from her shoulder.

French society was scandalised by the ‘indecency,’ and both Sargent and his sitter were stung by the criticism. The artist repainted the strap in an upright position and left Paris soon afterwards. He kept the painting, subsequently called ‘Madame X’, until after Gautreau’s death.

‘I suppose it is the best thing I have done.’

John Singer Sargent - Madame X (with a vintage photo of the original portrait)

In 1886 Sargent settled in London, joining a social circle of actors, artists, composers and writers. His studio on Tite Street in Chelsea had previously been home to the painter James McNeill Whistler, and Oscar Wilde lived opposite. 

Although Sargent painted a number of British aristocrats, for the most part his clientele was international new money. Their wealth derived from finance, commerce and industry, and they were set on securing social status – by buying grand houses and estates; by keeping the right company, hosting magnificent parties and making appropriate marriages. The clothes they wore and the portraits they commissioned all contributed to the process of assimilation. A striking portrait would attract large crowds at exhibition. It would be much discussed and broadly reproduced. And a full-length Sargent could cost around $120,000 in today’s money. The exhibition curators term this phenomenon the ‘economy of images’.

Almost half of Sargent’s female sitters wore black gowns. While black retained its association with mourning, in the late 19th century it became fashionable for women of all ages, not least because new synthetic aniline dyes enabled an intense pure depth of colour. When, on a visit to his friend Claude Monet, Sargent discovered that there was no black paint to be found, he declared that he simply couldn’t work.

John Singer Sargent - Lady Sassoon

This period also saw the rise of haute couture. Name brands like Paquin or Doucet provided their clients with what novelist Edith Wharton described as ‘social armour.’ Many of Sargent’s sitters wore outfits from Charles Worth, an English designer who dominated Parisian fashion, and catered particularly to British and American customers. A Worth gown would cost between $10,000 and $30,000 today.

‘I have Delacroix’s sense of colour and I compose. A toilette [a complete ensemble, from the French word toile, cloth] is as good as a painting.'
Charles Worth

In the exhibition, Sargent’s work is displayed alongside examples of period fashion, including several original garments featured in his paintings. Although the artist claimed that ‘I only paint what I see,’ throughout the gallery we can observe where he has adjusted a strap here, removed a bow there. He clearly styled his sitters, pinning, draping, tucking and folding their gowns to create new shapes and textures. For his portrait of Lady Sassoon, he pinned her black silk taffeta opera cloak, so that the bright lining was more visible, creating a dramatic river of pink.

Foreshadowing today’s Instagram culture, one French critic noted, ‘there is now a class who dress after pictures, and when they buy a gown ask ‘will it paint?’’

Sargent was just as interested in painting fashionable men as women.

The surgeon Samuel Pozzi stands proud in a red dressing gown and Turkish slippers, one hand on heart and the other toying with the cord of his robe.

John Singer Sargent - Dr Pozzi at Home

The debonair Lord Ribblesdale looks rather superior in a long dark velvet-collared coat, buff breeches and polished black boots. Sporting grey kid gloves and a hunting whip, the elegant outfit is completed with a top hat and flamboyant silk muffler tied to one side. It was said of Ribblesdale that ‘he never stepped out of his picture frame.’

Sargent painted the young illustrator and designer W Graham Robertson holding a jade-topped walking stick and wearing a long, black wool Chesterfield overcoat. Robertson recalled that, during the sittings, the artist would ‘pull and drag the unfortunate coat more and more closely around me until it might have been draping a lamp-post.’ Sargent subsequently declared:

‘The coat is the picture.’

John Singer Sargent - W Graham Robertson

All in all, it’s a splendid exhibition, full of glamour, performance and personality.

Whilst marvelling at the flamboyance of the fashions featured in Sargent’s portraits, we may imagine that the sartorial codes and social values of late 19th century high society are a million miles away from our own. Surely we live in a more liberated, egalitarian world of informal attitudes and casualised style.

But clothes continue to signal something about our individual identity and sense of belonging. 
In the first half of my career, I dressed casually for work. Until my clients donned trainers, chinos and Ralph Lauren Polo shirts. I promptly switched to city suits, keen to create some distance and differentiation. I was amused to learn that Sargent played a similar game. While painting his clientele in their elegant finery, he himself tended to wear a sober business suit.

On encountering the artist in 1899, the poet Wilfred Scawen Blunt described him as ‘a rather good-looking fellow in a pot hat, whom at my first sight I took to be a superior mechanic.’

Whether we like it or not, we are constantly judging and being judged.


'When you wear your high-heeled boots with your hip-hugger suit,
It's all right, you're outta sight.
And you wear that cute mini-skirt with your brother's sloppy shirt,
I admit it, girl, that I can dig it.

When you wear your bell bottom pants,
I just stand there in a trance.
I can't move, you're in the groove.
Would you believe, little girl, that I am crazy about you?

When you wear those big earrings, long hair and things,
You got style, girl, that sure is wild.
And you wear that cute trench coat and you're standing and posing,
You got soul, you got too much soul.’

Brenton Wood, 'The Oogum Boogum Song’ (A Smith)

No. 474

Aspirational Analogies

I was chatting recently to a Young Person about her career. Frustrated with her employers’ intransigence, she was considering resignation.

I naturally urged caution. Over the years I’ve seen quite a few people walk away from good roles in a fit of pique, often without giving due attention to their next move.

And so I reached for a helpful analogy:

‘You shouldn’t finish with one boyfriend until you have another one lined up.’

The Young Person nodded slowly, clearly considering my wise counsel.

The next day she messaged me:

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said. It’s not right at all. You should just finish with a boyfriend if he’s the wrong guy, whether you’ve another partner waiting or not.’

Yes, of course. I’d been tripped up by my own metaphor.

The thing is I do like an analogy.

'Analogy, although it is not infallible, is yet that telescope of the mind by which it is marvellously assisted in the discovery of both physical and moral truth.’
Charles C Colton

Over the years I have encouraged Planners and Strategists to think of themselves as psychoanalysts, flaneurs and cavaliers; to channel Bette Davis, Miles Davis and Miss Jean Brodie; to reflect on Casandra, Medea and the Trojan Wars. I’ve asked them to consider wind tunnels, spinning ballerinas and silent discos; to contemplate ‘70s crew cuts, shaving in the dark and the freezer in my garden shed. I’ve suggested they behave like a dog rather than a pig, a fox rather than a hedgehog, a gardener rather than a mechanic. And more besides.

'It has been said that discovery consists in seeing an analogy which nobody had seen before.'
Arthur Koestler

I’m firmly of the view that creative people in any discipline can learn from the great practitioners of film and fashion, art, theatre, music and dance. I believe that there are universal life lessons that can be discerned from everyday encounters and experiences. I think that when we are confronting challenges at work, it is healthy to step outside the narrow confines of one’s particular circumstances – the cliched advice; the tried and tested responses; the conventional choices.

And so, yes, although I was wrong in this instance, I do find analogies helpful.

'Nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which is wont to be simple and always consonant to itself.’
Isaac Newton

I read recently in the Times (3 March, Rhys Blakely) about a study carried out at the University of Essex (and published in the Journal of Sports Sciences). It suggests that a well-chosen analogy can instantly improve sporting performance by 3%.

The research looked at 20 footballers from the Tottenham Hotspur youth academy. Sometimes, before sprint drills, the coaches gave the teenagers ‘internal’ instructions that addressed particular body movements -  ‘extend your hips’ or ‘drive your legs into the ground’ for instance. At other times they gave the players directions that focused on their ‘external’ environment – such as ‘accelerate like a jet plane’ or ‘jump up into the air as if the ground is hot.’ 

The academics found that ‘external’ analogies immediately boosted sprinting speeds over 20 meters by 3 per cent, an improvement that would normally require weeks of training. ‘Internal analogies’ on the other hand tended to prompt over-thinking.’

‘When they start to focus on their body, there’s a risk that you turn what should be an automatic process, something that’s done without thinking, into a non-automatic process - suddenly you’re impeding the execution of that movement…The key is to concentrate on the external environment, but to do it in such a way that biomechanic information is concealed in language that anyone can understand.’
Dr Jason Moran

Perhaps studies like this will encourage business leaders to set aside the corporate script; to expand their vocabulary and reach for more imaginative similes and metaphors; to inspire their colleagues with more lateral, thought-provoking illustrations and examples.

'Apt analogies are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician.'
Winston Churchill

And maybe, with the benefit of a few aspirational analogies, Spurs will win their first silverware for some time...


‘Whenever I’m lonely,
Whenever I want you near.
I use my imagination,
Then suddenly you appear.
Whenever I’m sad,
And feeling a little blue.
My imagination brings me,
Closer to you.
My imagination
Is the only way I’ll have you.’

The Supremes, ‘My Imagination’

No. 473

Mary Quant: Becoming Bored Before Everyone Else

'All a designer can do is anticipate a mood before people realize that they are bored. It is simply a matter of getting bored first.’
Mary Quant

I recently enjoyed the documentary ‘Quant,’ celebrating the life and work of fashion designer Mary Quant (2021, directed by Sadie Frost).

'Fashion is a tool to compete in life outside the home. People like you better, without knowing why, because people always react well to a person they like the looks of.’

Quant, who passed away last year at the age of 93, brought affordable fun, freedom and comfort to female fashion. She designed for the Chelsea Girl, a young, emancipated working woman who kicked against tradition and convention. She introduced short, simple, streamlined garments, in bright, bold colours and patterns, worn with flat shoes and sharp haircuts. She democratised the jersey dress, the miniskirt, tights and trousers; skinny rib sweaters and PVC rainwear. She grew a successful business that expanded internationally and beyond clothes into make-up and homeware. And she taught us some compelling lessons about the creative mindset.

'Rules are invented for lazy people who don't want to think for themselves.’

1. Speak Like a Child

'I grew up not wanting to grow up.’

Barbara Mary Quant was born in 1930 in Woolwich, London, the daughter of Welsh schoolteachers. She had a blissful childhood, running wild with her younger brother in the Pembrokeshire countryside. 

‘I was the usual split personality as a child. One minute climbing trees, only wanting to play with boys and throw stones and steal apples and the rest of it. But equally there was the other side, where I just adored dolls and clothes.’

Quant found adulthood an unattractive prospect.

‘The day I was 13 I cried all day because old age had struck… Growing meant to me getting into stockings and suspenders… and high heels and having artificial hair and artificial nails. You know, a bosom that came into the room about 2 minutes before the rest of you.’

2. Find the Outcasts

Quant studied illustration and art education at Goldsmiths College, one of a number of British art schools that were inspiring a new generation at the time. She found true soul mates there.

‘We saw ourselves as sort of outcasts really, and trying to somehow gang together in Chelsea with a very few other people who felt as outcast as we did.’

Goldsmiths taught Quant to see the world differently.

‘We didn’t like the way things were, didn’t like the way things looked, the way people lived.’

3. Don’t Be Tasteful, Be Vulgar

Britain in the 1950s was a bleak, austere country, still recovering from World War 2, and young people were determined to change things.

‘We’d won a war and lost so much at the same time. There was a new generation that came romping through with high confidence and high spirits, and the generation that should have been there to control everything just let us do it.’

After finishing her degree, Quant pursued her fashion ambitions with an apprenticeship at a Mayfair milliner.

High-end design was at the time dominated by Christian Dior’s New Look, which, despite its name, was nostalgic for pre-war times. Quant instinctively felt uneasy with couture’s elite customer base and its establishment views.

‘We don’t want to look like a duchess…. Good taste is death. Vulgarity is life.’

4. Find Partners with Complementary Skills

At art school Quant had met her future husband and business partner, Alexander Plunket Greene. While she was somewhat diffident and reserved, he was a tall, charming, fun-loving aristocrat. He became a natural PR-man for Quant’s work.

‘Nobody said you can’t do it. We just did it.’

With £5000 that Plunket had inherited, and with financial advice from the entrepreneur Archie McNair, in 1955 Quant took a mortgage on a property on the King’s Road, Chelsea and opened her first boutique, Bazaar.

5. Risk It, Go for It

Bazaar was unlike the tired department stores and inaccessible designer shops of the time. The boutique had music, drinks and long hours for its customers’ convenience. It was also cramped and somewhat chaotic, with shoppers often changing on the shop-floor among packing cases.

‘Nobody said you’re not supposed to do it like that.’

The displays featured mannequins in quirky poses, which drew queues of curious young women and prompted angry bowler-hatted men to beat their fists on the windows.

'Risk it, go for it. Life always gives you another chance, another go at it. It's very important to take enormous risks.’

6. Design For People Like You

With her lean figure and short, geometric Vidal Sassoon bob, Quant embodied a youthful new style.

‘I just started making and designing clothes for people like me.’

She set about creating short, narrow, simple garments in an array of bright, bold colours and patterns. Shift dresses and pinafores, trousers, breeches and knickerbockers - clothes that promised comfort, fun and freedom of movement.

‘The clothes were very short and very simple. The shoes were very flat, so that you could run, dance, jump. All the clothes were very simple, but put together they had a very strong look.’

7. Be Inspired by Adjacent Worlds

Quant sought inspiration in the fashion worlds adjacent to womenswear.

'I liked masculine fabrics: Prince of Wales checks, city pinstripes and flannels - worn with black tights, flattish shoes.’

Trousers had for some time been worn by women in Hollywood and the services, and by students. But Quant popularised them for young females, introducing spotted cropped pants, breeches and dungarees. She also elongated men’s shirts into dresses and lengthened men’s cardigans.

‘Clothes are a statement about oneself or what one wants to be.’

The jumpers that she wore as a child prompted her to design skinny-rib sweaters. And her trips to the United States suggested the idea of ‘homewear’- special clothes for lounging in at home - 'underwear as outerwear.'

‘I hated fashion the way it was. I wanted clothes to be far more casual and easygoing and yet still sexy.’

8. Be inspired By Your Audience

'I liked my skirts short because I wanted to run and catch the bus to get to work.’

Skirts had been getting shorter since the 1950s, and the designer André Courrèges took them above the knee in the early ‘60s. But it was Quant who made the miniskirt mainstream, naming it after her favourite make of car.

Male Interviewer: Few girls have the legs, hips and, above all, panache to carry it off majestically.

Quant: But who wants to be majestic?

Quant was keen to point out that the driving force behind this fashion revolution was the consumer herself: the liberated, working woman, the Chelsea Girl.

'It was the girls on the King's Road who invented the miniskirt. I was making easy, youthful, simple clothes, in which you could move, in which you could run and jump and we would make them the length the customer wanted. I wore them very short, and the customers would say, 'Shorter, shorter!’'

The convention in those days was for women to wear stockings, often in 'American Tan', held up by garters and suspender belts - all very fiddly and uncomfortable. As Quant cut her skirts shorter, so she promoted tights to go with them - in black, and in bright mustard, ginger and prune.

‘I think a revolution was going on which fashion people hadn’t realised. I think the change of focus had gone from the rich international couture thing to the young working girl. She was going to set the pace in fashion, decide what was right and what was wrong.’

9. Be Inspired by Technology

Quant also turned to the latest technology for ideas.

‘The modern look is sexy, pretty, polished and dry cleaned.’

Jersey, a material traditionally used in men’s underwear, had been adopted by Coco Chanel for daywear in the 1920s and ‘30s. Quant employed new synthetic fabrics like Crimplene and Acrilan, which could be mass-produced at low cost. Her jersey dresses came in numerous colours and shapes, with different collars, sleeves, zips and buttons.

‘Sometimes all ideas come from the technology and sometimes the other way round.’

Quant was also fascinated by the space-age possibilities afforded by polyvinyl chloride (PVC), ‘this super shiny man-made stuff and its shrieking colours.’ Her 1963 'Wet Collection' featured entirely PVC garments, combining functionality with striking visual effects.

'Fashion is not frivolous. It is a part of being alive today.’

10. Be Permanently Dissatisfied

As Quant grew more successful in the UK and abroad, she remained restless to invent new designs and explore new frontiers.

'Fashion is a very ongoing, renewing thing, about change and reaching for the next thing. You are permanently dissatisfied, and it's always got to get better.’

In particular, she became frustrated with the cosmetics that women were wearing with her clothes.

‘I got involved with make-up because now that the clothes were different, the face was wrong.’

Tired of the ornamental nature of incumbent products, and inspired by the more theatrical make-up employed by catwalk models, in 1966 Quant launched a cosmetics line of bold shades in a simple all-in-one paintbox package, and featuring her trademark daisy logo. 

‘I think the point of clothes for women should be: 1. that you’re noticed; 2. that you look sexy; and 3, that you feel good. I can’t see that we wear them to keep warm.’

11. Be Stubborn

As a female entrepreneur working in a still predominantly male environment, Quant had to endure a good deal of sexism. She was clearly incredibly resilient.

'The fashionable woman wears clothes. The clothes don’t wear her.’

In the documentary Quant tries to explain her vision for a new fragrance line to a sceptical male perfumier.

Quant: It seems to me that to be a woman now is a very schizophrenic situation… And I think this perverse schizophrenia is the mood I would like to arrive at.

Perfumier: Yes, I would agree entirely. But I think that to satisfy that you have to come up with two types of perfume.

Quant (Impatient): But it’s the same woman!

12. Retain Creative Control

As Quant’s business expanded across the world, so did the pressure on her to keep producing new designs; to maintain the machine. 

'One of the things I've learned is never to hoard ideas, because either they are not so relevant or they've gone stale. Whatever it is, pour it out.’

Quant turned to licensing her brand to sustain its success.

‘Licensing allows you to extend your brand to new markets, new areas, new categories. Which can be very exciting for a brand. But it’s about control and it’s about a sense of understanding between the licensee and the licensor. That’s where you’ve got to get it right.’

Inevitably Quant did lose some of her creative control in these deals. In the documentary she complains that one of her commercial partners wants her to remove the pockets from a dress design.

'Well, you know, he’d like to get rid of these pockets all together. I think it makes the whole thing. And it’ll save him 10 pence.’

13. Live in the Future

'Most of my memories of the ‘60s are ones of optimism, high spirits and confidence.’

As the ‘60s drew to a close the mood changed from optimism about the future to one of disillusion and protest. Fashion turned to Bohemian and ethnic styles; to floaty dresses and flared, faded jeans. Quant’s modernism seemed less relevant.

'The whole 1960s thing was a ten-year running party, which was lovely. It started at the end of the 1950s and sort of faded a bit when it became muddled with flower power.’

Bazaar closed in 1969, and through the ‘70s and ‘80s Quant concentrated on household goods and make-up. In 2000 she resigned as director of Mary Quant Ltd after a Japanese buy-out. 

Mary Quant had anticipated the Swinging ‘60s and come to embody its lean, fun-loving, modernist attitudes. She had changed the way British women dressed and thought about clothes.

‘Fashion is all about change. And I’m designing for the future.’

As well as being a revolutionary designer and resolute businesswoman, Quant was articulate about the role of fashion in women’s lives.

‘Fashion is for now, not necessarily for teenagers... If you’re still enjoying living and you’re still enjoying being a woman and being sexy and being alive, then one wants surely to wear the clothes of today.’

I was particularly struck by the way she characterised ennui as a positive and productive force in consumer culture.

‘I think that a designer has to be someone who is permanently bored – permanently bored with the way people look at any particular time, wanting to live in the future, wanting to change things.’

Quant suggests a compelling challenge for creative people working in any industry: become bored before everyone else!

 

'I just don't know what to do with myself.
Don't know just what to do with myself.
I'm so used to doing everything with you,
Planning everything for two,
And now that we're through.

I just don't know what to do with my time.
I'm so lonesome for you it's a crime.
Going to a movie only makes me sad.
Parties make me feel as bad.
When I'm not with you
I just don't know what to do.

Like a summer rose
Needs the sun and rain,
I need your sweet love
To beat all the pain.’

Dusty Springfield, 'I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself’ (B Bacharach, H David)

No. 472

Expressionists: The Creative Melting Pot

Franz Marc, Tiger

I recently visited a splendid exhibition of Expressionist art at the Tate Modern, London (until 20 October).

‘We were only a group of friends who shared a common passion for painting as a form of self-expression. Each of us was interested in the work of the other…in the health and happiness of the others.’
Gabriele Munter

The Expressionists were a loose community of artists based around Munich in the early 1900s. Originating from Eastern Europe and North America, from Russia and Austro-Hungary, they endeavoured to convey subjective interpretations of the world around them; to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than the physical reality. Painting simplified forms, in bold colours with carefully framed compositions, they sought stimulus from folk art and foreign cultures; from spiritualism and child psychology; from colour theory and other media. They were true creative pioneers.

‘After a short period of agony, I took a giant leap forward, from copying nature – in a more or less Impressionist style – to feeling the contents of things, abstracting, conveying an essence.’
Gabriele Munter

Gabriele Münter Portrait of Marianne von Werefkin 1909 Lenbachhaus Munich, Donation of Gabriele Münter, 1957 © DACS 2024

At the exhibition we see vivid representations of couples debating at the dining room table; promenading in the park; reclining on a hillside in the sun. There are mystical skating rinks, circuses and stage shows; woozy street scenes and dreamy landscapes. With bold outlines Gabriele Munter presents elegant society women with purposeful stares – here’s a benign lady in a broad bright hat and purple shawl; and another with neat hair, sharp eyebrows and almond eyes. Franz Marc paints animated wildlife - a sinuous yellow tiger in the undergrowth; two brown deer playing in the snow; a sweet-eyed doe looking up to catch the light. And most radical of them all, Wassily Kandinsky gives us kaleidoscopic interiors, the milking of a psychedelic cow, and mysterious sacred visions - staging posts on the path to pure abstraction.

‘[Art has the power] to awaken this capacity for experiencing the spiritual in material and in abstract phenomena.’
Wassily Kandinsky

Bavaria provided a relatively liberal and open environment for the Expressionists to work. There was a prosperous middle class and a thriving academic and scientific community. They visited galleries and museums, studied Islamic art and purchased Japanese prints.

Some of them were fascinated by children’s creativity and toys; by recent psychological studies suggesting that kids had spiritual inner lives. Maria Franck-Marc painted children captivated by flowers; a girl in the garden cradling a toddler.

They explored colour theory - the impact of colour on mood - and investigated synaesthesia - experiencing one sense through another. In ‘Impression III (concert)’ Kandinsky, a skilled cellist, created a chromatic visual response to a musical performance by Arnold Schonberg.

‘Kandinsky paints pictures in which the external object is hardly more to him than a stimulus to improvise in colour and form and to express himself as only the composer expressed himself previously.’
Arnold Schonberg

Wassily Kandinsky - Impression III (Concert), 1911

Often members of the group went on sketching holidays to Murnau, a rural town in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps - swimming in the lake, skiing in the mountains, designing their own gardens. As they created work, they also debated ideas.

‘In every house one found at least two ateliers under the roof, where sometimes not so much was painted, but where always much was discussed, disputed, philosophised and diligently drunk.’
Wassily Kandinsky

The Expressionists were as much engaged with the past as the future. A rather beautiful Kandinsky image depicts a mythic knight riding along the river’s edge with a noblewoman in his arms and the luminous walls of a Russian town in the distance. They collected Bavarian folk craft and religious artefacts, experimenting with the traditional technique of reverse glass painting - by which an image is created on one side of a glass panel and viewed from the other.

The movement was also interested in pre-Christian faiths, Hinduism and Buddhism; in the emergent theories of Theosophy and spiritualism.

‘I’m striving to intensify my feeling for the organic rhythm of all things, trying to feel myself pantheistically to the quivering and flow of blood in nature, in trees, animals, the air.’
Franz Marc

The Expressionists teach us to break down boundaries wherever we see them; to seize inspiration wherever we find it. Theirs was a true creative melting pot, encapsulated by the Blue Rider Almanac - from which they took their group name, Der Blaue Reiter. Published in 1912, this volume of collected images and academic texts, included folk, religious and children's art, and featured works from all over the world.

‘Blue Rider…will be the call that summons all artists of the new era and rouses laymen to hear.’
Advert for The Blue Rider Almanac, 1911

Sadly, with the outbreak of the First World War, the collective dispersed. Marc was killed in combat, aged just 36. Kandinsky returned to Russia, others fled to Switzerland. This optimistic, outgoing, internationalist movement seemed suddenly out of step with the times.

‘In our case the principle of internationalism is the only one possible… The whole work, called art, knows no borders or nations, only humanity.’
Draft preface for The Blue Rider Almanac, 1911

Riding Couple by Wassily Kandinsky, 1906-1907
LENBACHHAUS MUNICH; DONATION OF GABRIELE MÜNTER, 1957; TATE MODERN

‘Where do you end?
Where do I begin?
Start over again,
Feels like we're melting, melting.
That's when I melt into you,
I melt into you.’

Kehlani, ‘Melt’ (N Perez, A Wansel, K A Parrish)

No. 471