Being Molested on the Tube Today by Six Youths

18.06.2024

As I was going home on the Tube after The Royal Opera House and Hyde Park in the Rose gardens, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked around. There was no one there. I ignored it. Then it happened again. I looked at the woman walking next to me. She was looking at me but as soon as I turned my head she looked away and walked on. Then, I felt the tap again a few moments later. And this time I caught the prankster. It was a youth dressed in the boring black that is the horrible uniform of all of these people in this country and demonstrates their sickening conformity.

I told this young man off even though he had five other youths with him. All of them towered above me at six and a half feet. I did not care. Because I won’t let a stranger touch me whenever they want because I have self-respect. Because the only honourable thing is to stand up to these disgusting people that want to ruin someone’s day by invading their personal space and agitating them after a day’s work. He smiled insolently in my face. He stood next to me on the escalator down, smiling all the way. When we came off the escalator, I told off all the other ones too because they were accusing each other and hiding in their group like the little cowards that they were.

Everyone walking with us walked quickly away leaving me alone by myself with the youths. What do you expect from the people in London and this society? No one will ever help you. That’s why you have to fight your own battles.

The pretended to say sorry – because they were little cowards. Then, as I walked away, one of them tapped me on the shoulder again. I ignored it. I walked off. They all laughed. They thought that they had won.

They hadn’t won. All that had happened was that there was nothing else to do without resorting to violence. Because in this country, the law does not protect you. It can only punish you if you react according to how a honourable man should in that situation. The law protects the cowards.

I got home and told someone what happened and she was scared. About what? They are cowards. They can’t stand up to a real man. And what if something had happened? There is a principle involved. I don’t care how many there are. In the end, I was satisfied with my behaviour.

Winter Wonderland – Poster Parade 2024 (London Transport Museum)

All of these posters can be seen on the collections page for the London Transport Museum:
https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections

Lovingly put together, a treat of festive fun, this poster parade (art gallery) celebrates the many faces of winter. Here is my commentary on each of the posters. These views are my own personal views and are not endorsed by the organisation.

1. Anna Hymaas ‘Winter Fun – Skating’ (2016)

This shows ice skating at Somerset House. When I went there with someone, that was the highlight of my time with them and one of the highlights of my life. It was snowing. We had such fun there together. And then we had hot chocolate afterwards which I bought for us. It was a wonderful feeling – I felt like I was in a movie. It was the happiest time of my life. I felt so lucky to be there with us both.

The poster is interesting formally because there are three main formal variations which move from each other – the black silhouettes at the bottom, then the coloured flats of the people in the middle, then the cartoony line drawing of Somerset House at the top.

2. Edward McKnight Kauffer ‘Winter Sales’ (1924)

In the perpetual rainfall of this grey land and its winters, two inscrutable women whose faces that we can’t see. A mysterious image. What type of shoppers are these that explore the sales? Flat colours, lots of folds.

3. Frederick Charles Herrick ‘It is Warmer Below’ (1927)

Meant to make you go on the London Underground because it is warm in winter. This sounds silly to us now, but just the other day, I rushed to get onto the tube to get away from the cold. There is something in it that still relates to us today.

The poster is interesting because it is a cross-section of the earth and I enjoy looking at these types of images (although this one is minus the interesting treasure chests and dinosaur bones that usually litter these kinds of illustrations in children’s picture books – which I love!) There is some beautiful elongated typography for the image.

4. Hans Unger ‘Winter Country Walks’ (1958)

A beautiful black tree which is shaped like a leaf with an sun enclosed in one of its branches. A very profound image, one that recalls all of those beautiful walks we take through the parks and the woods in winter. The tree is divested of leaves but becomes a leaf itself. There is a wonderful brokenness about the tree and the black paint which contains many gaps and fractures within it, giving a wonderful impression of texture and ruin – the archaeologist’s delight. I’ve mentioned before that I identity with the sun because of my name (Suneel). Ultimately, an image of hope and happiness that defies the barrenness of the trees in winter and gives them a sunlit beauty.

5. Hanna Well ‘Hampton Court’ (1963)

Textured image with the distinctive red bricks that the Tudors used for building. A moonlit night. The image seems curiously empty and dead to me – perhaps this is the effect. An invocation of the uncanny. The effect is created through the use of empty space and the vacuum that it creates. The buildings are stacked up towards the top and the moon, so almost half the image is nothing.

6. Unknown ‘Winter’s discontent made glorious’

Against an ominous, sublime, inhumane cloudscape, we see a train in which the windows are filled with scenes from dining, shopping and the theatre, spaces crowded with fashionable people. On one level, the poster reminds us that some of our liveliest and happiest scenes have been in winter. On the other hand, the fact that the train and its illuminated scenes are to plunge into the dark abyss of a tunnel which would extinguish all light seems to refer to the depression that can come upon us in sun-starved winter. It is a conceptually balanced design.

7. Horace Taylor ‘Brightest London is Best Reached by Underground’ (1924)

All of the fashionable darlings of London going up and down the elevators. A very charming and colourful image and a perennial favourite amongst the posters. The women are attired in beautiful, bold patterns. Flat colours evoke a Matisse-like effect and a distinctively modernist flavour. The lines of the elevator create a beautifully structured form and lead the eyes up and down, mimicking the movements.

8. Margaret Barnard ‘Winter Cavalcade’ (1938)

The striking thing about this one to me is the Janus face of the skier flying through the air – red and blue. There is something carnivalesque about the image and it is endearing because of that and its simplicity through the use of flat colours.

9. Walter Goetz ‘Empress Hall – Earl’s Court’ (1937)

This one is super simplistic – so much so that it could be an instance of primitivism in art – the attempt to draw like a child. About ice skating again and dominated by the text that surrounds the two figures enmeshed together in a movement. Has a dynamism about it because there is a white arc that translates as the movement attempted behind the figures.

10. Harry Stevens ‘Winter in the Country’ (1965)

This one looks like a stained glass window of the countryside. We are looking through a window into another scene of beauty, travelling to a different world through our vision. The fields are brightly coloured and not painted in local colour (i.e. their natural colour) – this shows us that is a world of the imagination and not crude reality. It is a world of magic.

11. Compton Bennett ‘Winter Sales – quickly reached’ (1926)

A collage of place names and figures in an oval pattern. An effective use of typography and information delivery. Texture is created in the oval through stippling. The oval sort of looks like a snowman’s face with the red nose in the middle – I wonder if this effect was attempted at or it is just an arbitrary construction on my part?

12. Laura Knight, ‘Winter Walks’ (1957)

Branches dangling onto a winter walk. The path leads us into the distance. The trees and the branches are barren, the ground is furrowed. It is a scene which is striking because of its austerity.

13. Charles Pears, ‘Ice Skating’ (1928)

The poster that stood out most to me. It shows a beautiful woman engaged in a graceful movement across the ice, her face obscured in shadow, her scarf elegantly billowing against the pure snow behind her. She is entranced in the flow of the figure, lost in her skill to the world and its impurities… Such is the beauty of this season and of ice skating itself, one of the most beautiful of pastimes.

14. Kathleen Stenning, ‘Keep warm – travel Underground’ (1925)

Snow falling on houses on top. Underneath, the crowded and vibrant scene of the London Underground. The top actually seems to me to be quite serene and lovely. While the bustling scene below is supposed to give the impression of life, it is claustrophobic and dominated by the crowd. I would have preferred the above – with an umbrella, walking in the snow is actually a delight precisely because no one is around. But I guess that I am not the sort of person that this poster is supposed to appeal to – it is for the more sociable. I need a lot of alone time.

15. Leith, ‘Shop in Town’ (1928)

Faces without expressions, eyes, features. The weather is presented as a series of blue lines. There is a stark and featureless quality about every aspect of the design – perhaps symbolising the threat of the weather to identity and personality?

16. Molly Moss, ‘Out and About in Winter’ (1950)

Piccadilly at night, a huge crowd, bright lights. I’ve often been in this scene in the winter months myself. I love the claustrophobic quality of this one – because I do like walking around in the crowds in London at the night time (by myself). And observing. And this has a sort of panopticon view of that.

17. Unknown, ‘Winter Sales’ (1920)

A clock with a crowd in it. But beautifully executed and with wonderful sepia tones, like an old photograph. Two women stand out from the black suited people lining up in the background, giving the image some personality and life and individuality, someone to relate to.

18. John Burningham, ‘Winter in London’ (1965)

People dominated by great trees. The sublime in nature, or how it overpowers the self and mere man. The sheer power of nature and the world of vegetation and trees.

19. Paul Catherall, ‘Winter’ (2006)

Flat colours. A landscape – ‘London’s famous skyline’. Horizontally set towards the ground with a big sky above, a sort of half and half between the man-made earth and the heavenly sky.

20. Clifford Ellis and Rosemary Ellis, ‘Winter Visitors’ (1937)

Some charming and eccentric looking birds with funny staring eyes. Fighting over a morsel. A picture of the competitive life within nature, but also within London itself. It is a rat race after all, with all the squabbling, ill will and resentment and dissatisfaction that it contains within itself. Showing us that we are not better than the animals.

21. Harold Sandys Williamson, ‘Brighter London for Winter Sales’ (1924)

A big cherub on a building looking down at a London scene. Because of the angel, this becomes a cute and surrealist image, a balancing of the otherworldly and the mythological with the reality of life in the 1920s, a time when people were beginning to move away from the classics towards what was ill-advisedly and insincerely called ‘modernity’. So this is a reminder of their importance and the importance of the art tradition which was based on paintings full of cherubs and allusions to the classics.

Terence Conran’s Memories of Dora Batty – Dora Batty as a Person

23.05.2023

MY PREVIOUS REVIEW OF THE DORA BATTY POSTER PARADE AT THE LONDON TRANSPORT MUSEUM:

https://diaryofaloneman.home.blog/2023/04/07/dora-batty-poster-parade-london-transport-museum/

(note: This analysis has been done for non-profit purposes of education, and makes ‘fair use’ of the publication cited for purposes of analysis and comment in the public domain).

1946 – Sir Terence Conran was a student of Dora Batty’s at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in textile design (he wanted to be a textile designer at first). He mentions her in his autobiography. this is an attempted analysis of the writing – a psychological study of Dora Batty (as artist) through Conran’s recollections.

CONRAN TURNED UP FOR HIS INTERVIEW WITH DORA BATTY WITH ‘repeat-pattern drawings, a book of pressed flowers (Suneel’s note – maybe this is why she liked him so much and gave him a chance – she loved drawing flowers), paintings, a few fuzzy photographs, ceramics, and bits and bobs of metalwork and woodwork.’ (26)

Source: Sir Terence Conran, Terence Conran: My Life in Design (Conran Octopus, 2016) – ALL REFERENCES IN BRACKETS REFER TO THIS SOURCE.

(NOTE) GOOGLE BOOKS: (Sir Terence Conran) founded the Habitat chain of stores in England. Starting in 1977, his U.S.-based Conran’s stores helped launch the home furnishings retail boom. He is the author of thirteen books and was knighted in 1983 for his service to British industry and design. He lives in London, England.

DORA AS ‘WONDERFUL’ AND WARM-HEARTED

Conran describes Dora as ‘wonderful’ (26). She stands out as a unique (and warm-hearted) person in contrast to ‘a bunch of stern middle-aged ladies’. Dora gives Conran a chance and lets him pass the interview even though he didn’t have much knowledge of textiles (26). This reveals various aspects of Dora’s personality:

Conran remembers Dora fondly. He has no reason to lie about what she was like. This indicates that she had a welcoming and friendly, nurturing aura as a teacher
She was good at recognising talent in someone like Conran who would become a famous designer
She would nurture promise if given a chance – even in an unconventional way – Conran says he was actually surprised to have passed the interview (26). The lack of conventionality and following strict rules of ‘objective’ assessment shows that Dora had good intuition, flexibility and discretion and judgement (reminder – look at how influential Conran is)
Not everyone gives people a chance in life – Dora was a good, generous person
Dora was compassionate to the young and inexperienced – and patient enough to teach such students even if they didn’t know that much
Conran says he was shy (26) – Dora looked beyond social conventionalities and was impartial enough to give Conran a chance on his art, rather than judging him as a person
GENDER: After he passed the interview, Conran was the only boy in a class of 33 women. Just like the London Underground gave Dora a chance as a woman in a male-dominated industry, she gave Conran a chance as a man in a female dominated industry. She was fair and inclusive and challenged the social norms in favour of meritocracy and giving someone a chance (to change the status quo).

STRICT AND CAPABLE
‘Dora Batty was very strict but she ran the course superbly. She saw that her students really had something to do at every moment they were there…’ (26).
Why was she strict? Maybe because she cared about art and design so much. But this also indicates a controlling side to Dora. If you look at her art, it is all very controlled and restrained and ordered.
Dora as overachiever student? She piled on work on the students – maybe this is because she worked very hard herself (ceramics, textiles, posters, etc. – it takes a lot of work, effort and learning to master all these different disciplines).

MULTICULTURAL, RESOURCEFUL AND HISTORICAL – THE MUSEUM-GOER

‘One of the most fascinating things she arranged was a twice-a-week, behind-the-scenes visit to the historic textiles collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, where there are vast halls with hundreds of thousands of prints and textiles from all over the world…’ (26)

Dora was an avid museum-goer – it’s fitting that she is in a museum through her art
Conran was there at the school in 1946 – Dora had negotiated the teaching at the V & A in the immediate post-war period when there were limited opportunities – she was incredibly resourceful
The first poster with Persephone and Hermes reveals her interest in historical costume and textiles, as well as her multiculturalism (ancient Greece)
Dora had good connections – she was a people person. Imagine how hard it would be to arrange a behind-the-scenes at a museum today, especially such a prestigious one – people wanted to help Dora. Remember, she was a woman in a man’s world, too… Even more of an achievement
The initiative of Dora: this is quite a creative solution to education – to share world-class resources that most people don’t have access to for her students and to give them a multicultural and global education

THE INSPIRER/THE MUSE/THE GOOD TEACHER

‘Dora brought in a whole raft of young designers and artists to broaden our horizons and inspire us.’ (26)

Dora is interested in contemporary art – see her Art Deco influences in posters such as the RAF poster. She kept up with everything that was happening (to improve the craft – conscientiousness, awareness).
Dora likes the energy of the young and encourages them. Not only did she teach youngsters, give inexperienced youngsters like Conran a chance, but also, she promoted the work of young designers and artists. Compare this to the current climate: she used her power for good and for a meritocracy. She challenged the status quo in favour of the new and change (all the while also giving her students a historical, world culture with the V & A). She is generous, embracing, inclusive, creates a stimulating intellectual environment of like minded souls.
Remember, she is choosing these new artists and designers because they could inspire – great artistic discretion and knowledge of people.

Dora Batty Poster Parade – London Transport Museum

07.04.2023

You can see all of the posters in the Poster Parade here:

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/the-collection

1^st Floor, London Transport Museum

Adult ticket: 24 pounds, Concessions including students: 23 pounds (ANNUAL PASS)

REVIEW

While I have many interests in life, there is one game that has always captivated my attention. My friends, it is THE Game. The game of interpretation: finding meaning, making connections, excavating the context, trying to understand what others are trying to express underneath a rigmarole of deceptive diversions. I have played this game quite seriously, having studied for an English Literature degree and then having pursued doctoral studies in the subject (then publishing books and articles). The game is all-consuming and unending. I lie in bed at nights replaying conversations, working over sentences for half an hour at a time if they are important enough to warrant it in the conversations I have during the day. To play the game, I have studied all these subjects at university level: legal studies, English literature, history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, anthropology, criminology, sociology, psychology, the history of photography, feminism, Marxism, deconstruction, Postcolonialism – and now – art history. Besides forays in my spare time into mythology, archaeology, cryptography and the decoding of languages, language learning, politics, animal intelligence, evolutionary psychology, biology, and the physical sciences which reveal how humankind attempts to fathom the cosmos.

Why do I mention The Game? I survey the posters in the London Transport Museum Poster Parade because I love to play it. And above all, the most enticing thing is a mystery, a puzzle, a seeming dead-end, what first comes as a blank wall. As I have admitted so much, it will now do to admit more. It was a genuinely exciting moment to encounter an unknown female artist who has not received much critical attention and about whom I could make a big contribution towards understanding. The subject was the enigmatic Dora Batty…

Little is known about Dora’s life. She is known only for her professional roles and her output. Like other women artists, she has been neglected, never achieved the fame of her male compatriots… As a result, one cannot bring biography to a study of her artwork. Neither can one be misled by what others have written, which seems to be a particularly abhorrent current practice of the scholar, the interpretor and the guide. One imagines a woman that never made much of an impression. One cannot even visualise her appearance because a photograph has not even been recovered. For a moment, I had a fantasy of tracing her family genealogy so that I could try and contact any living descendants that might have a diary, a photograph, written records or objects of some description so that I could have something else than the art. In the game, it is permitted to cheat… What a delicious daydream: an expedition, an adventure, new people to meet, new avenues to pursue, a quest of interpretation…

But I am left to just looking at the work and thinking. Justice demands a scrutiny of the woman artist’s works, a redressing of her dismissal by (White) Man. Let us begin.

The first exhibit that meets us in the Poster Parade is ‘The Underground brings all things nearer’. We are in the conventional grounds of Greek Myth. As it clearly states, the poster celebrates ‘The Return of Persephone’. She is being rescued from the underground by Hermes. Dora loves to tease. The obvious play is upon the concept of the ‘underground’. While it signifies Hades and hell, it is also obviously referencing the Tube. For a poster commissioned by London Transport, this is clearly a subtle bite at the hand that feeds her, the delicious tease of a mocking and ego-defeating woman. From the Underground, hell and the tube, Persephone is emerging. The concept of the poster is that from the Underground, which we imagine as the realm of the dead, life and fertility is emerging in the form of Persephone. But there is a moment of feminism in that period of emerging women’s rights and the Suffragette movement – Persephone (woman oppressed, captured, imprisoned) is rescued from her controlling husband (the LAW, Death, Sovereignty, POWER…) Now, there is the question. What is the biographical aspect, what is the women’s movement? The Suffragettes were around at this time and they were fighting against the patriarchal laws of marriage, with its enclosure of the woman in the domestic realm. But is there something else in Dora’s life? Bearing the hallmarks of its time, Persephone is rescued by Hermes, a man… There isn’t total emancipation of the woman. Is there a new man in Dora’s life at this time, an extra-marital affair…? However, one also remembers that Hermes is the protector of travellers, the god of roads… He is dressed as a traveller, of course, with winged sandals. There are subtle resonances for the highly educated and the classicists in this poster about travel. Dora is clearly classically educated… The game, my friends. One has to learn the mythology of the world to play it…

The tragedy with the poster is that Persephone still had to spend months of the year in the Underworld – there is no ultimate freedom from MAN AS KING AND DEATH… Ambiguity and despair is always there in the background. Is this a realistic assessment of women’s politics at the time (and still now?) Or is it the acceptance that Dora cannot release herself from her marriage (was she married, or is the poster simply about a fantasy of emancipation)?

Now, let us talk about the flowers. Flowers flood the posters. Persephone is also holding a flower. Is the flower sex (the flower is a sexual organ which is ‘penetrated’)? Are we witnessing sexual liberation in Dora’s psyche? The implicit love triangle in the first poster – Hermes, Persephone, Hades. Travel itself as sex (a holiday romance, perhaps?). The fantasy of sex rather than its achievement from a repressed woman? Dear Dora, why do you not write what is the case? If the hypothesis that the flowers are sex is right, can it be confirmed by some of the other posters? [It is worthwhile to mention here that there are other suggestions. Not only have female artists painted flowers throughout art history, as a ‘woman’s genre’, but also that women themselves have been described as flowers throughout history and particularly guilty were the Victorians and those around at the start of the twentieth century – flower as woman herself in this art, or rather her sexual body and her body as a body of desire…)

In ‘Bluebells are out’, an anonymous female caresses the flowers lovingly. Her lips are upon them, her hand clenches them. Her senses are engaged. She smells them. So we have touch, the sexuality of a kiss, intoxication with the scent. Full sensory engagement. She also looks directly into the flowers. Is this look at the flower and sex what the viewer is expected to understand and echo? Woman playing with her own sex and sexuality? Is this the revealing mirror of subjectivity at the heart of the image? Let us be Freudian and make an insinuation about how the hand is holding the phallic bunch of stalks of flowers at the bottom of the image…

In ‘Crocuses are out’, woman swoons over the flowers which she caresses again with her hands. With her eyes shut in ecstasy and Lacanian jouissance… The flower she smells is pinkish red – the colour of sex…

So, perhaps we have an exhibition of a woman artist that is pursuing liberation, including sexual liberation. Perhaps we are seeing a woman fighting against the Law and the figure of the King for a new tomorrow and for ownership over her own body and desires… Perhaps we see Dora the fighter. But a jaded fighter. After all, what is the fight of the artist? It is true that many of the Suffragettes were artists, a disproportionate amount. Was the main fight in the visual arts and against the visual culture of the Law and the King, Oppressor Man?

Let us leave identity politics for a moment. Let us talk about Dora as she is in my favourite works of hers. I will write first about the interesting pattern in ‘Whitsuntide by Underground’. The artist has woven together many moments of leisure into almost a textile pattern (she worked in textiles). The composition is crowded and flooded with energy. People are joined in small communities by their pursuits, families, friends, athletes. They are also integrated in nature and the countryside through trees, fields and water, animals. There is a harmony of leisure and nature, life and the world, an inter-connected and unbreakable pattern. And let us not forget the female body’s interaction with the flowers in the early posters – nature is a body that unites with woman’s body. Woman is nature, humankind is nature – the celebration of the animal self that we have come from that lived in trees…

Similarly, ‘There is still the country’ shows the woman’s body wedded to the (phallic, it must be said) tree. The whole scene is blown about from a strong wind and enriched with the sun which seems to emanate from the woman’s head, her creative force and mind. There is pure energy, enlightenment (emancipation)… The leaves fall from the trees – there is transformation, the relentless but cyclical turning of the time as in Hindu thought… What is dead and dying is to be shed to make space for what is living….

So is this Dora? Or is this merely Suneel’s Dora? One makes an argument. One seeks to persuade. But more than that, one seeks to know. In the absence of clues, one looks to a Suffragette context. In the absence of a photograph, one tries to plumb a mind. The Dora exhibit is interesting and important because it brings these thoughts to mind. It asks why a woman of such talent has no place in thought. It seeks to rectify this wrong. Dora’s art is stylistically very Art Deco. I do not know if she followed the movement, or how much she contributed. I do not know how important she is in the history of Women’s Rights for making art that explores women’s issues and attempts to rescue them from the ills of sexual repression (if sex is the theme that I have not invented for our Dora). And finally, one makes an admission. The interest, the thread that I have followed is that Dora is Modern Woman. Someone that I do not understand – if anyone does. To understand the mind of this challenging and reticent creature, one often has to gaze at the expressions that she leaves about her in the world. And to form an opinion, one has to dare a conjecture, even as a man – which might wholly be wrong and is entirely contestable, of course…

You can see all of the posters in the Poster Parade here:

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/the-collection

List of Posters:

Dora Batty, 1923 – The Underground brings all things nearer
Dora Batty, 1925 – From country to the heart of town
Dora Batty, 1924 – Foxgloves, Kew Gardens
Dora Batty, 1925 – From town to open country
Dora Batty, 1921 – Travel with the children
Dora Batty, 1930 – Season ticket, travel cheaply, save money
Dora Batty, 1927 – Bluebells are out
Dora Batty, 1927 – Blackberry time
Dora Batty, 1935 – Special shows of tulips
Dora Batty, 1927 – Crocuses are out
Dora Batty, 1927 – Daffodils are blooming
Dora Batty, 1932 – Regents Park to see the rose garden
Dora Batty, 1928 – Buy a season ticket
Dora Batty, 1924 – Survivals of the past, Painted Hall
Dora Batty, 1932 – RAF display, Colindale station
Dora Batty, 1936 – Trooping the colour
Dora Batty, 1924 – Survivals of the past, Yeoman Warders
Dora Batty, 1934 – Easter
Dora Batty, 1938 – Out and about by London Transport
Dora Batty, 1926 – Make yours a General holiday
Dora Batty, 1931 – Whitsuntide by Underground
Dora Batty, 1926 – Hampton Court by tram
Dora Batty, 1926 – There is still the country

‘Green Travel’, London Transport Museum: Poster Parade Review

(Poster Parade lasts for approx. 3 months before it is changed)

1^st Floor, London Transport Museum, Covent Garden

Entry to the London Transport Museum: £21 for an annual pass (£20 students and concessions)

08.02.2023

All the posters listed at the bottom in the Poster Parade can be searched for and viewed here:

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections

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.

List of Posters in the Exhibition (all searchable at: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections)

Anonymous, ‘Golder’s Green’ (1911)
Maxwell Ashby Armfield, ‘By Underground to fresh air’ (1915)
Gwynedd M Hudson, ‘Spring Beckons You’ (1929)
Alfred Leete, ‘Nightwatchmen’ (1928)
Anonymous, ‘Clear the Air’ (1938)
Charles Sharland, ‘Light, Power and Speed’ (1910)
Anonymous, ‘London’s Tramways’ (1929)
F Gregory Brown, ‘By Trolleybus to Kingston’ (1933)
Abram Games, ‘Carfree Carefree’ (1967)
Nick Hardcastle, ‘Or take the Tube’ (1987)
Austin Cooper, ‘Bicyclism – the art of wheeling’ (1928)
Transport for London, ‘London – made for cycling’ (2007)
Anonymous, ‘Get ready for Prudential Ride London’ (2015)
Rachel Lillie, ‘Good for you green for London’ (2010)
Easy Tiger Creative, ‘Cycling for Pleasure’ (2016)
Anonymous, ‘Don’t Choke London’ (2001)
Anonymous, ‘London Car Free Day’ (2002)
London Transport, ‘One full bus equals forty empty cars’ (1998)
London Transport, ‘1 billion miles in the car’ (1998)
Anonymous, ‘Cleaner Air for Greater London’ (2007)
Anonymous, ‘Hydrogen powers rockets’ (2014)