(PhD in Visual Culture and the Law, Currently 2nd Year Art History Degree with the Open University)
Jai Maa Kaali! Inquilaab Zindabaad! Inquilaab Sada Zindabaad!
(Hail the Dark Mother! Long Live the Revolution! May the Revolution Live Forever!)
(All info gained and discussed here given in the hyperlink below)
Charles suggested the butterfly symbol as identification for the future.
– The butterfly stands for ‘metamorphosis’. When we are seeing the portrait of a King in the outdated, undemocratic monarchy and the reiteration of the same conservative politics, ethics and being. A first born in a patriarchal culture.
– The butterfly is supposed to be oneness with nature – ostensibly to support Charles’s nature work. Is it the red monarch butterfly? If so, the suggestion is that monarchy is natural and unquestionable. When it is a social construct and decidedly unnatural to have someone rule over you. The shared redness of the colours – the royal colour – suggests Charles’s oneness with royalty in nature.
– The butterfly’s transformation is perhaps also implicitly being linked to the transformation of society as we become one with nature. He is being idealised as a hero for the movement for environmentalism and sustainability – but do we have massive amounts of money like he has so that we can be heroes like him? No. It is a false celebration.
– The butterfly is ideology.
– And yet, the interview, Charles says the butterfly is how he will be identified by ‘children’ – the imagined viewer is the child that is gullible enough to swallow this ideology.
– The blackness in the butterfly – which stands out as a deliberate contrast to the overall scheme of red – is ironic given the accusations of racism made against the old guard in the royal family with the issue of Megan and Harry – as though he is being reconciled with blackness. Or it has chosen him and his shoulder for a perch to rest on. This seems like ideology again: a soothing fiction for the public.
– Red is warm. Suggestion that Charles is warm-hearted.
– Hands on the sword – suggestion of Charles as masculine strength and power – pretty ridiculous. Even the portrait artist has to hide it at the bottom of the portrait outside of the focus because it is preposterous to think of him like that. The sword image diminishes the touch of gentleness and warmth from the butterfly landing on his shoulder as though he is a Disney Princess at one with nature. It shows the reality of the ideology – that Charles represents the coercive force of Conservatism, Patriarchy and its rule of (unjust) ‘legitimate’ force in our society.
Summary: Artwork from the African Diaspora. The website says:
”As well as surveying the presence of the Black figure in Western art history, we examine its absence – and the story of representation told through these works, as well as the social, psychological and cultural contexts in which they were produced”.
Notes:
– The title ‘The Time is Always Now’ comes from James Baldwin in the 1960s writing about the civil rights struggle.
My comment: So the aim of the exhibition is to combat racism and this is what it should be judged on – if it is giving dignity, equality and positivity to the black figure. Is it?
Overall impressions:
Goes through quite a lot of the current thinking about racism like ‘double consciousness’ when non-white people have to look at themselves through a white perspective as well as their own non-white perspective, etc. Educational for people that haven’t experienced racism and don’t really understand what it is like.
The art is presented as educational and as being completely resistant to racism. Can art be unambiguous and not contradictory like that? How easy is it to escape racism and to be free in terms of artistic vision and in your expression?
And how beautiful are the artworks? Were they captivating? Art does not have to be apolitical to be beautiful. But I wonder whether there were any pieces of great beauty in this exhibition.
The artist says this is a composited fictional character ‘which really looks at the value systems contained within portraiture and monuments’. He was supposed to be giving power and grandeur to ‘fictional everyday people’, the under-represented black people excluded from art history and classical sculpture.
My Comment: Why closed eyes? The artist says she is embracing ‘the inner world that she’s manifesting there and trying to bring clarity perhaps, to all this noise around us’.
I wrote a book about the valuation of symbolic blindness in imperialistic, racist and misogynistic Victorian Britain. When blindness stood for power. Are the eyes closed because of this association from the past? Devaluation of sight in this system of valuation as in Western culture – when for Indians it is the queen of the senses and the motor of revolution.
The statue stands right at the front of an exhibition where we are looking – a guide to how we are supposed to see the rest of the exhibition?
Composited photographs from Victorian Britain by Galton were used to isolate supposed ‘racial features’ – how distanced is this sculpture from that process of racism and essentialisation when we are talking about race and the black figure reframed?
My favourite painting in the whole exhibition. This is an intimate portrait of one of the artist’s friends and family. It is about a ‘human relationship’, not a person.
The face is caught in a mood of introspection. A thinking man. A reflection on thought and on the minds that give us our personality, that create our relationships with others. The restricted palette of pink is beautiful: textured, cloudlike, dreamy. Details make up the piece, there are no flat colours, many many colours. Complication. Nuance in technique. The enigmatic meaning of the feet – one clothed foot, one bare. The play between the spectacle of the body and the covering of the clothes, the ‘outer’ and the ‘inner’. A drip of paint falls from the black figure as it escapes into liquid from form. There is an air of insubstantiality, dissolution, as though everything is melting away.
The thoughts of this thinking man are what are highlighted by the artist in the personal relationship. So is she connected to him because he thinks? And what is the emotion here about that connection and his thinking? It is a mysterious image, a puzzle. Maybe her thoughts about him are unresolved, oscillating between definite form and the cloudiness that informs the image. An ambigious, contradictory and paradoxical image.
This is supposed to ‘dismantle’ an exclusionary Western visual representation and to subvert it. The artist is replacing the white female figures from neoclassical style paintings with black women. The artist deconstructs the western representation and removes it from the picture through cutting, etc. Then, he inserts the black figure – inclusion.
In this painting, the black serving figure for the white woman then serves the black woman instead, so the racial power disappears from the image.
The white figure disappears and becomes a black face. However, there is a sophisticated point to this image: the white figure is still providing the frame for the black face. Blackness is still being seen through the frame of whiteness. If you look carefully, one of the eyes is cut off by the outlines of the white figure that has been cut out. The black eye is limited by the white outlines that have been given to us from history. There is a tired self-awareness in this image.
The black face inside the white frame looks sad. Her own body is missing – the black body. Even her hair – with all of its power and symbolism – is not being presented. We are seeing the fragment of a black woman’s body – she still hasn’t achieved full representation. The image conveys the sadness of racism and the artist’s rendition of the black figure. It is still a work in progress, still unattained. The Time is Always Now…
What’s on the Turner Prize shortlist this year in terms of ‘Punjabi’ art? Covered with a giant white doily, a red Ford Escort vehicle is presented to us. The ‘art’ is in front of a photograph of a family with the car.
Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre, who sits on the judging panel, said Kaur sees the vehicle as a “representation of her dad’s first car and his migrant desires” and it “blasted snippets of uplifting pop songs referencing freedom and liberation throughout the space”.
Obviously the artist shortlisted in this country – when they are Indian – would necessarily be female. This is what ‘diversity’ means to white people when it comes to the Subcontinent – the women. Their books, their art, their cinema. It is all celebrated. Because they are heroic ‘victims’ of Indian culture to the West. Us men are to be ignored and marginalised. Because we are the ‘oppressors’ of women in this culture.
And what about this piece which white taste has valued? The big white doily is the key. It covers over the car. The migrant desire – according to the rules of white society – is to be covered over in whiteness. The white doily – the whiteness – is self-consciously patterned and artistic – it is the touch of art in the piece. Otherwise, there would just be a car and a family snapshot. The white doily – the whiteness – is what creates this exhibition as a piece of art work. It is what demonstrates ‘taste’, ‘selection’, artistic ‘discrimination’ (the pun is intended).
And what about this ‘migrant desire’ which – despite the capture of the car in the whiteness that is like a constraining net – blasts songs of freedom and liberation (laughable)? It is ideology at work. The veil of ideology covering over the vision of the car, the white veil over things for the migrant experience. Blinding the eyes and vision. Interfering. Coming between self and object, mind and reality. Art is the white veil itself. What else is? They sing of freedom. When they are the exploited. They sing of liberty. When they are constrained and bound by the white net.
The car. The phallic symbol. Red to signify status and dominance. Gross materialism. Migrant desire is couched as greed. Desire for masculinity in this patriarchal white supremacist society. Desire for control – one drives a car.
Desire for freedom – the car represents freedom. A cliched symbol of freedom the car. But this one is caught up in the net. Even the music – they blast snippets of songs about freedom. Even musically, the freedom is partial, disrupted, interrupted, punctured by purposely oppressive silence.
Do you know what the net signifies in India? The net of maya – illusion. Gross materialism. Trickery. What comes between us and the understanding of reality. The doily is perhaps maya. This white culture and its control, its limitation of freedom for the migrant. The doily becomes kitcsch art – described by several art historians as the artwork of a capitalistic, unthinking and unfeeling, philistine and totalitarian society.
Yet, there is a paradox. If I remember correctly from the Metro newspaper article that I read today about the art piece, the doily also represents the Sikh and Indian workers that worked in textiles factories in huge numbers when they first migrated here to the United Kingdom (Metro 24.04.2024). So this net of whiteness is being created by the migrants themselves. Their deference. Their blind adulation. Their willingness to be exploited. Their inability to revolt against the systems of power.
So what are the migrant desires of the Father in this image? As seen through the eyes of a Punjabi woman? Desire to criticise the wants of the Father? Or an attempt to be sympathetic to his wants?
The artist writes:
‘In this show I am having a conversation with personal histories,’ explains Kaur, ‘exploring improvisation and political mysticism as tools to reimagine tradition and inherited myths.’
But is this a re-imagination? Look at the piece again. It tries to base itself against reality as ideology – against the photograph, the representation of reality. The photograph has the Indian family in it. The base unit of Punjabi and Indian culture. The finished art exhibit has no family in it. It has a relationship merely to the Father in a patriarchal system of culture. A Father that wants to be covered in whiteness. Is this what is valued in this culture? Probably. The probability is on the side that adulates whiteness and patriarchy. The family is forgotten in favour of the Master. In favour of isolation and individualism. In favour of the desire for mastery and control and power.
This opinion reflects my personal views in my capacity as a private individual and does not reflect any consensus or anyone else at any of the organisations I work at or volunteer for.
Ascending up the stairs to the exhibition space on the mezzanine, you see a window through which you glimpse another world, another milieu, the past. It is a rare interior scene of a coffee house, one of the new forums for public debate that shaped the modern world. The customers are reading the newspapers that created the imagined community and fostered and nurtured the Western nation-state. Thus begins the historical journey into the Chocolate House in Greenwich. We are guided through a sort of window onto the past.
Behind another window, we then see the esteemed lady that ran the Chocolate House on Blackheath as one of the many women in history that have provided the world with its unique and wanted things. It is Grace Tosier ‘at the height of her powers’. Her eyes stare at us in the portrait through time. We are sharing her vision. She is the character that is leading us through things, the guide, the model: a strong, independent woman in a capitalistic culture. The heroine for this time and this society.
We learn that the Chocolate house served royalty. It then ‘became the Georgian equivalent of a celebrity hotspot’. So now we experience the glamour of the place.
The exhibition now shifts its focus. The story changes. We start learning about the origins of chocolate in South America, how it came to Europe, how it involved the morally reprehensible evils of a capitalistic society which evolved from slavery and exploitation. The trajectory of the story has shifted. We have come to a moral reckoning of the realities behind the glamour of the chocolate house. A confrontation with evil.
At this point in the story of the exhibition, like a huge wild monster from the imagination, we see a glorious display of the Cacao Tree rising up on the wall against a black canvas. The plant is covered over in insects. Why this image? The beauties of nature? The absolute origin of chocolate depicted without any varnish, perhaps, warts and all? The idea that the comforting illusions of capitalism, when the veil of ideology has been ripped off, reveal an insect-ridden reality?
The story of the exhibition journeys next into how coffee houses enabled ‘the free discussion of the latest ideas, unrestrained by the protocols of the royal court.’ In the light of what was before, the implications begin to produce a result: the free speech of this country is founded on the fruits of slavery and exploitation. It is an implicit link.
There are quite a few interesting pictures to ponder over at this junction in our journey which reflect the culture of the times, so that the task of time travel is further enabled.
Now, there is the context: Greenwich. So the place is elaborated.
A table draped in a table cloth reveals the production process of chocolate.
We then move onto the last years of the Chocolate House. And we see an image of what the building might have looked like from the outside.
Finally, the piece of the resistance: the final destination of our time travel. In a room, we enter the chocolate house. We are fully immersed now in the space. There is a life size reproduction of Grace Tosier’s image as we descend down the ramp to meet her face to face. A video plays in the space to complete the immersion not only through space in the room, but through vision, sound and characterisation. We have travelled backwards through time into the space of the chocolate house.
What do we make of this exhibition? It covers a lot of ground to make a coherent narrative: this was the chocolate house, with all of its social and political implications at the time, with its basis in capitalism, exploitation, slavery. With its enabling of social mobility at the same time for women like Grace Tosier in this context. All of the pertinent facts are presented. There is balance. And there is a stimulation of the senses with pictures and videos alongside the curator labels. There is the face of Grace Tosier to characterise the whole scene, as well as the images from the country of origin with the people there.
You get a sense of historical immersion in the chocolate house. You get a ticket into time travel into Greenwich in the 1700s – a unique virtual reality experience. An enabling of the imagination. A real journey into another place and time.
My overall sense of the exhibition is that it is interesting, unique, well researched and well thought out. In addition, there were labels for the children which would make them interested in this topic that they love too – chocolate (and the pictures to stimulate their imaginations). This was a conscience driven exposure of the past and its evils, the foundations of the public forums and the discussions that they bred that have lasted into the present, the foundations of the modern day nation state and its present evils in the evils of the past.
I did feel a certain want in the exhibition – I wanted to know more about Grace Tosier, the character that we meet face to face. A curiosity about her. But of course, the reality is that while we have a name and an image, we cannot expect a biography in a historical exhibition like this. Part of the fun is imagining her life, too. Part of the fun is being stimulated to know more – and the chocolate house exhibition certainly does this. So, in summation, a stimulating and unique experience which fosters a self-reflection on the economic and political origins of our public forums and our public discourse, what has made us and this state into what it is today, a real journey. A real experience of learning.
These are my own personal views of the exhibition and do not represent any of the views at any of the organisations I am working in.
This exhibition is a triumph of energy and imaginative problem solving from the children, the future. It is a reaffirmation of the fact that the human race has always solved any problems that have come into its path and will do so again. That we do not lack inventiveness and ways of thinking around and through things. Even with problems that we have created for ourselves. It is a reaffirmation of optimism in the world and in the future of our children and the species. This world which we have spoilt can be fixed. That is the message of the exhibition.
Six primary schools were set an imaginative task in collaboration with the London Transport Museum – they had to find solutions for the climate change crisis. Aliens had told them that their planet was no longer liveable and they needed to start over again in an environmentally friendly way. The inspiration for their planet-friendly technology was to come from animals and plants.
As I walked around the masses of reclaimed cardboard boxes and lollipop sticks, the resourcefulness of the children was in abundant evidence. These cast away objects had been magically transformed. They had become something again. They had become the visions of the future. The tinkering of the children, with the artistic designs, showed their enviable creativity and collaboration skills.
Inventions were strewn about everywhere like a mad scientist’s frenzied laboratory:
‘The Helpful Bumblebee cleans the air and rubbish. The Earthly trees stop flooding and pollution as well as cleaning the Earth and so prevents coughing and sneezing. The Legendary Pigeon sucks in pollution through its nose.’ (Exhibition Text).
The models for each of the animal inspired inventions were cute and beautiful in their way – the innocent and sweet and simple beauty of children’s art and the infantile imagination.
The young artists and inventors had become curators too, and told us about the most interesting and important facts about the exhibits in the museum. It was beautiful to see what they had learnt and what had inspired them to share.
A nice touch was to show an old poster that imagined the future in London as a skyline with skyscrapers and flying vehicles. The idea that we have always dreamed of a better future for transport, that we have always had dreams which have changed this world that we live in for the better, that allow us to make a fantasy world that we live in in reality. The strength and far seeing sight of our mind’s eye.
This was a beautiful exhibition – full of dynamism, an adventure into a mad scientist’s laboratory. An excursion into possibility and the resilience of the children’s mind that can respond to the death of a world to create new life and new beginnings, to build a world entire, the world of the imagination. The desire for a better world from the innocent that have not been corrupted by dismay and stagnation in the selfishness and greed that is around us. But which rejuvenates itself in animal and plant life, in caring and positive change.
The Olympics is coming. I am the fan of athletics and gymnastics. But now, there is no time to watch. I am the lover of the body. I am the lover of skill. I am the lover of the beautiful people. And the lover is separated from his beauties, the body and the skill. Life mirrors life, hurt mirrors hurt, separation mirrors separation. What does one expect? Less than nothing.
Going back to exploring digital painting styles. In art, without experimentation, there is nothing. Everything is an experiment. Never stick to one style.
People hate my digital art. So what? Fuck you. I do what I want when I want. When I don’t want to do it any more, I stop doing it. Just because someone uses traditional media doesn’t make them a better artist. Just because someone draws like a photograph, it doesn’t make them a better artist. Art is about capturing your ideas and your feelings. It is not surprising that no one can relate to the art of The Tiger. Because who else is The Tiger here? I am alone in this world. I am like the Western god. In a society that believes in individuality, I am the only individual. In a society that believes in personality, I am the personality. In a society that believes in culture, I am the cultured one. In the society of supposed men, I am the lone man.
Massive pains in the leg. In Hindu philosophy, life is suffering. You are condemned to the world. The doctor’s won’t pick up the phone. So I sent an email in the morning. They didn’t reply to it. Even the people that are paid to care for you don’t care for you. Such is life.
Fortunately, I have an incredibly high pain threshold. I even ran for the bus this morning feeling the shooting pains all over my leg. And I caught it too.
I will wait a couple of days for the doctor’s, but I don’t actually expect anything from anyone nowadays. The scene that comes to mind is Collateral when Tom Cruise the villain says that no one will even notice you are dead on the metro in a Western country for a few days.
A young blonde woman on the tube that was standing next to me on the way home leaned over me and kept on touching me the whole way home. She very nearly rested her head on my shoulder. Even the other women sitting down were looking at her to see what she was up to (a young brunette one kept on staring at me and then looking away when I looked at her at the same time – typical behaviour for these young women). If I had done that to a woman, I would have been accused of sexually harassing her.
Everyone on my tours today asked me what my name was so they could write their comments on the feedback forms and praise me. I had nineteen people in total over the quick tours in the hour. Some of them actually requested the feedback forms so that they could give me a compliment. One offered me a tip. Even when The Tiger is in pain, he is still The Tiger. I always perform. It’s what I’m known for. If there is one person you can depend upon in this world, it is me. I commit absolutely.
People think that I am wrong. They always think it. If someone rejects you in love, they are telling you that you are not a man. They have devalued you. They have judged you as inferior to them. And people are telling me that I am wrong for not wanting to remain friends with them? It is me that is right. But do you know something? I know that whoever they go with is worse than me. I am the best. I am what I would want if I was a woman. It doesn’t matter if even the ones that don’t love you don’t think it. The mind, the body, the learning, the heart. The patience, the love. The achievement of understanding. The freedom and the power. The spirit of The Tiger. India is everyone’s daddy. We are the oldest. We are the most knowledgeable. I am India. It is the name I call myself.
Two quotes from Indian movies in my translation, to share with the non-Indians and to spread the culture:
If freedom is a crime
Then the punishment is accepted
Now what will happen
Will be the will of God
(The Thugs of Hindoostan)
By heart we are soldiers
By mind we are the devil
We are India
(‘The older master is excellent, but the little master is outstanding’)
These flowers are hurting me. And they are what people want to see from me.
I can’t give up this diary. This diary is my best friend in the world right now. But I might need to give it up.
Anyone reading this diary has probably tried to piece together the story. Which perhaps they haven’t managed to do. The background story of this diary is very simple (i.e. THE PLOT):
Boy liked girl
Boy thought girl liked him
Girl didn’t
(MISUNDERSTANDING NUMBER ONE)
Boy tried to distance himself from girl and avoid her (over several months) – unsuccessfully
But boy secretly still liked the girl.
Finally, boy tried someone else and gave up on Girl 1
There was a bad result because of a misunderstanding between boy and girl 2
(MISUNDERSTANDING NUMBER TWO)
Boy got hopes up about girl number 1 again following a conversation
Boy tried once more
Result – Girl never liked him
(MISUNDERSTANDING NUMBER THREE).
NOW: Boy is trying to cope with the situation and move on. Solution – avoidance. How do you kill your like for someone? So he is sad and angry at the world. Disappointed. What would you expect?
Those are all the facts and there is nothing more to add. All the details are private and nobody is going to know that story, so nobody should make any assumptions about it. Boy is going to have to cure himself by himself. The story is over.
The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope – The Spaces In-Between, Tottenham Court Road
08.04.23
FREE ENTRY
Art by Rupert Newman (light artist) and PixelArtworks
It happened unexpectedly. A fine example of serendipity, the right place at the right moment. I had just spent a few hours browsing in Foyle’s and a small independent second-hand bookshop and was just making myself towards Tottenham Court Road. I was musing over the books I had seen and I was thinking to myself that I certainly wasn’t rich enough to have all the books that I wanted to read and to have to keep in my own personal library and to share with my kids. That privilege was reserved for the billionaire or the British Museum.
And there it was. The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope… An awe-struck mass of bodies within a space carved out by futuristic light, right next to the station.
The space is described as a ‘digital portal’ and we are meant to ‘discover a prismatic new experience’. The location of the site is important because it is ‘In-Between’ spaces. One of the installations (or ‘spaces’) reacts to your body as you stand before it. The display is in front of you, above, around four walls. It is a type of immersive, interactive art (four dimensional, they sometimes call it). The experience is touted as semi-religious and the installation is described on a panel as a crystalline cathedral of light’.
So this is why I call it ‘The Infinite Colourful Light of the Moving Kaleidoscope ‘. Light, of course, is associated with Christianity, with enlightenment, progress and truth, things that capitalists like to give lip service to when they put us out of work because of computers and technology (it is always right to rail against the so-called technological progress of the capitalists, since this is the weapon of their hubris). I was in a Chapel service recently and they called the Christian God’s kingdom a place of ‘infinite light’. Art is akin to the Christian religion in our age, perhaps its best substitute. When you go to an art gallery, there is a hush like there is in the chapel. There is a reverent lowering of the eyes before the icons of the age, just as they gaze up at the icons in a religious setting. All the visual display is impregnated with a colossal and sublime meaning, with divine beauty that is not of this earth… For art is considered to be of the spirit for some (not for me, it is still earthly and profane).
As I moved within this computer generated, geometric space, encased in the ingenuity of man and machine, within light, art, animation, music, the energy of the crowd, I was certainly impressed. It was a novel experience. It was a beautiful experience. Yes, it was even a beautiful experience.
Yet where was the meaning behind it all? I read the panels for each of the three different spaces. There were the described themes. Firstly, ‘A Step Beyond’, the immersion in another digital world. Yet how different was it from the contemporary enveloping of the subject in the age of the computer? Was the artwork just priming us as digital subjects, a repetition of what was happening in our technologically mediated reality? Secondly, ‘Transcendence’. Yes, the art is beautiful. The beautiful forms of nature are rejuvenated in an encounter with geometry. The translation of the subtle mathematics of the world into the mathematical language of geometry. But what does the viewer get from this? A strict regularisation and stylisation of the beauty of what is for what can be imagined is the staple of most art, which is abstract at heart (even within supposed realism). But what is the status of this new abstraction for us now and why are we being placed within it in this space? Is awe for nature to be replaced for the awe of what man and machine in unity can now do, what imagination and computer code can achieve? ‘Tessellations’ was more of the same thing: animated geometric patterns filled with light. A world of code that surrounds us, like the Matrix, changing, transforming, not sending out any obvious message, not allowing any thought but awe…
Perhaps the difficulty is not the lack of the message but the lack of the training we have to try and understand abstract art and the elusiveness of meaning in abstract, geometric art itself. Perhaps I do not understand the proposed religiosity behind the installation. Certainly, geometric art figures in Islam in Mosque designs and calligraphy as an expression of faith. Perhaps there is a feeling of endless harmony and connection with things that the piece is supposed to evoke. I did not get this feeling. I got the beauty. I did not get the sense of the digital sublime which all the spaces were meant to evoke. I did not feel engulfed, threatened (perhaps the wonders of the technology are supposed to threaten to usurp man). I lack fear – Punjabi men are afraid of nothing and no-one. Especially not code or geometry filled with light. For me, the exhibit was a good waste of time just before I got onto the Tube, but not an inspirational experience or one which provoked much thought, except for the vague idea that I could get together a venue for something like it and make a bit of money off it… To be really honest, it was like being in a screensaver.
I don’t think it is any exaggeration to say that the most important and constant preoccupation of our times is the environment and how we can save the world from the damage that we have done to it. Following the recent, successful, ‘Green Journeys’ exhibition in the Transportorium of the London Transport Museum (LTM), the site is now hosting a ‘Green Travel’ Poster Parade on the first floor. The Museum’s consistent championing of the environmentalist cause has genuinely inspired many youngsters and I remember a visitor telling me how much her daughter missed the ‘Green Journeys’ exhibition when it was gone. She said it had been her daughter’s favourite space in the whole museum because of its educative power.
Public transport has been hailed as one of the solutions that can help to minimise environmental damage to the planet through the economical use of energy and resources. As the title and introduction of the exhibition suggests, there has been much investment in the tube to ‘make London cleaner and greener’. As Londoners know, there has been a historical practice of encouraging commuters to use their cars less, the advertisement of journeys to clean, green spaces of countryside outside of London, as well as a promotion of walking and cycling so as to ease congestion and keep the air breathable. While many of the strategies have borne fruit, such as in the reduction of coal burning and industrial pollution, the public transport infrastructure still has problems to face in reducing pollution and creating a zone with clean air. The saving of the world is still very much a work in process.
The historical range of the images in the Poster Parade is from the early twentieth century in the 1910s to the twenty-first century and the 2010s. The styles and subject matter range from realistic landscapes, to illustrations of space and the planets, edited photographs, games of text and image, visual animalistic metaphors of transport as taxis are literalised as snails, and the conversion of the London landscape into bicycle parts. Quirkiness, comedy, creativity – even horror as the effects of smoke pollution are made evident in the imagined future of a child’s photographed face – all these collide together in the exhibition, whose one sure strength is variety.
The quirkiest image is probably the one of the taxis as snails by Nick Hardcastle, ‘Or take the Tube’. The black cabs of London are famous throughout the world, as is ‘the Knowledge’ that their cab drivers boast after years of learning, but these instantly recognisable facts are given a surprising visual metamorphosis. The familiar is manufactured into the unfamiliar, even the Freudian uncanny. The snail shells add to this impression as Freud called the uncanny the ‘unhomely’ and the shells are their homes. Faintly sickening, the snail taxis glisten with a disgusting mucus which symbolises the dirtiness left by the motor car as its imprint on the world and its journey. The clustered ranks of molluscs, an identical parade, suggest a dreary and unthinking conformism.
I have two favourite images. The first is ‘Good for you green for London’ (2010) by Rachel Lillie. This is the winning illustration in ‘The best of contemporary illustrators’. The illustration depicts London’s journeys through the experience of the cyclists and the message is the promotion of ‘the benefits of cycling for our health and the environment’. The display notice adds that ‘TFL cycling initiatives such as free and tailored cycle skills sessions are teaching safer ways of navigating the city’. The space is imagined as a leaf unfurling through time, with its veins as pathways to famous London landmarks. I liked the image for two reasons. First of all, this seems to be the only illustration by a woman in the collection, if one assumes that the other illustrations and posters are all by men (they may not be, many of them were presented with ‘Artist Unknown’, which was a slightly frustrating experience). Diversity is still a real challenge in illustration, as I know from my own experience as a digital artist, and it is good to support those of us who are examples of diversity and have got a little recognition. Secondly, like the artist, as she says on her website, I am also interested in the depiction and conceptualisation of space, especially London. An interesting connection is drawn in the illustration between the red bus and the cyclists who are shaped in a blood red. The cyclist moves in the same ethical space as the public transport vehicle, as a being that creates a cleaner and greener city. The famous London landmarks are shrouded in the night as black outlines while the cyclists are illuminated by a light that blesses the good. Perhaps the suggestion is that the conventional vision of the city has to change and the things that were once considered important have to yield to the renewed experience of stewardship we face in the age of environmental calamity.
My second favourite poster is ‘Carfree Carefree’ by Abram Games (1967) which is given a renewed life in this contemporary exhibition in this contemporary world. The poster and the title are the same, white letters shaped like a bus against a background of purple, red and orange tiles. Typography is one of my own preoccupations as a digital artist and letters shaped like images act upon my senses with an unrivalled seductive power. The letter bus in the poster hurtles past a small car in the background. The demonstration is of the strength of the bus in relation to the individualised, little car: public transport versus the individual, social and public civic responsibility in the age of environmentalism versus the selfish fixation with the material possession of the car and its solitary amusements. As with the other posters, the interest is in how a public transport corporation converts its competition with private forms of transport into an ethical mission to save the entire planet and the people and life within it. Financial competition does not always have to be selfish after all, it can be of the people and for the people, against the luxury and convenience of the individuals that won’t participate in the group.
The two messages that hit hardest were ‘One full bus equals forty empty cars’ and ‘Each year we cover nearly 1 billion miles in the car on journeys of less than a mile’ (1998). It is always facts that can hit hardest. These facts also contextualise the aim of London transport to get people fitter and get out there walking and cycling. Of course, some have mobility issues, but for the majority of people, it is laziness and the convenience and instant gratification culture that is choking the planet.
My overall impression of the Poster Parade is that it is successful artistically and in terms of its content and importance. And in terms of inspiration for change. The historical sweep is illuminating because it reminds us that people in London have always cared about its clean air and to eliminate the pernicious effects of pollution. Yes, we are facing an environmental disaster. But the good have always fought against this with technology and with the right morals. There is hope and no need for despair. They, the good, will always fight for a better world. Yet, there is no ‘triumphialism’. The Poster Parade acknowledges that there is still much to do and much to fight for. That elusive dream of ‘Green Travel’ is still a work for the making, even though it is the most alluring and important dream of our times.
Although many Londoners don’t realise it, Transport for London has one of the biggest collections of specially commissioned artworks in the entire world. At the London Transport Museum, the thousands of posters in the archive are narrowed down to a select few for the Poster Parade which can be found on the first floor of the museum, behind some of the historic vehicles. It is one of my post Art History Open University degree ambitions to write a monograph on the collection of posters which bear illustrations and advertisements concerned with the world wars, destinations inside and outside of London, architecture and seasonal greetings which nestle amongst safety warnings and ticketing offers.
Most alluringly, the current exhibition boasts the work of Tom Eckersley, a twentieth century poster designer. The introduction to the exhibition summarises his signature style: “bold, bright colours and flat graphic shapes”. Personally, I think Eckersely owes much to Matisse the master, including the use of cut out colours in collages, the simplification and stylisation of figures and the obsession with the brightest hues.
Eckersely worked through the 1930s to the 1990s and managed to design over eighty posters for London Transport. At first, he worked in collaboration with the artist Eric Lombers. The exhibition describes him as ‘transforming commercial art’.
When Eckerseley was working in the 1930s, ‘posters were a hugely effective form of publicity’ the exhibition relates, although the challenge was to compress information so that it could incite further curiosity and relay compressed information in milliseconds: ‘a strong message with a simple design’. To quote the exhibition again, to achieve these ends, Eckerseley employed ‘minimal text’, conveyed messages ‘through pared-down graphic elements and bold blocks of colour’. My personal view, however, is that the posters play quite complicated visual games. I don’t see them as a visual reduction of information. They take quite a bit of decoding to understand the message shown and to understand the flight of imagination that Eckersely took to create the design.
Overall impressions of the Poster Parade? The artworks are visually stunning, richly coloured and immensely memorable. Eckersely really is a master of the poster genre. It is a delight to see the things. However, the short exhibition suffers from repetition, where nearly identical posters are displayed, and there is a certain fragmentariness where a fish poster is shown with the other half (another poster) missing. Having said that, the final word must be that the posters are beautiful, historically significant and therefore interesting because they deal with issues raised by the World War and show how heritage in London has been promoted before.
Finally, from my perspective as a digital artist that often uses flat, bold colours in my compositions, the exhibition is successful in that it shows how beautiful art can be when it uses simple geometic elements to build up its own language and communicate with the viewer. Although Eckersley uses a much more polished style than my own spontaneous ‘calligraphy-art’, the affinities are astounding, as you can see from a poster I designed recently below, and which I will finish this short summary of my impressions with:
diary of a lone man 