Face Troubles Again; The Heroine: The Story of the Mother’s Day Flowers; Holidays Booked and Travelling; Forcing Myself

10.03.2024

Face recognition troubles are increasing. Because she was wearing different clothes, I didn’t recognise the person from that context on the tube yesterday. I thought it was her. Then I thought maybe it just looks like her and then I ignored her. Because it is weird to say hi to someone on the tube if it isn’t that person. It sounds like a chat up line. That was the minor one – because I kind of recognised her, or at least I thought it kind of looked like her before I changed my mind. The major one was today. I spent the entire morning talking to that person, someone I’ve never met before. And then, later, because she was wearing a hat instead of wearing her hair down, I didn’t recognise her any more. I thought it was someone else that was there. I only found out because I asked her if she had been at the other place where the flowers came from because I hadn’t seen her there.

You know, when I was a kid, I thought it was really stupid that no one could recognise Superman as Clark Kent in the comic books because he just wore glasses. Now it turns out that I’m even worse than that. All they have to do is change their clothes or cover their hair. Then I can’t recognise a woman any more, even like today when it was literally just five minutes after I finished talking to her.

They gave out Mother’s Day flowers to some women in that context today. Someone joked that I had given them to someone. Actually, I helped to transport those flowers. I took someone up in the lift that was carrying them. As we were talking, I asked him about the lady with the crutch that refused to go in the lift to go up. What was the reason behind it? Was she scared of being in the lift? The man told me that she wanted to prove that she could do it and she wanted to get the exercise from doing it. She is a very resilient woman. I have watched her struggling up all those stairs with the crutch. He said it was silly. I told him that it wasn’t. I told him that I admired that woman. I have admired her since I have seen her doing it. You have heroes and heroines in every nook and cranny in this life.

She is like my grandmother. My grandmother would walk everywhere to save two pence on shopping on a product. Even though she had bad knees. Because that money she saved would be for her sons when she left them it. Because she had come from poverty. Because she had to leave everything behind in the Partition. The poor and the oppressed have a superhuman strength. That generation. That generation that raised me. While we were in the lift, that person told me that their mother had died forty years ago. I told him that was sad, that I was born around that time ago and that you never really lose someone. You think about them every day. So that’s how those flowers came to those women. Through that journey I took and through that conversation.

My holidays have been booked for the end of April. I have asked my friend if he is free and am waiting to find out. I am going to go to Scotland and the Hebrides – either with him or by myself. It is going to be an exploration of the natural world with some time in Edinburgh. Someone asked me if I ever go on holiday today. Because I haven’t taken a holiday from work for about two years really. The reason I haven’t gone anywhere is because I have been waiting for someone special to go with me. For a long time. I have them all saved up: Athens, Rome, Florence, China, Japan.

Actually, I have probably been to as many places as other people. I used to go camping in Wales every summer with my brother and his friends. I have been hiking in the mountains in Nepal. I have been hiking in Iceland. I have been to Washington D.C. on a business trip with my brother for the museum and the botanical gardens and the bonsai garden. I have been to Spain and France with my family. I went to India in the village as a child. I have been to Abu Dhabi and Dubai several times with my family. I have been to some of the swankiest hotels and restaurants in the whole world. How many other places do you need to go to? I don’t like travelling that much. You never meet anyone there. Other people aren’t interested in doing the things that I want to do. It is very expensive and I keep on thinking the money would be better spent elsewhere on something productive and useful.

The best holiday experience I have ever had was when we were in Nepal. I was the only one that could speak Hindi in the group which they speak out there. One guy got sick because he ate the meat there which the rest of us avoided. As a result, we had to change our plans while he got better in the hostel we were staying at. Back then, I can’t remember my age, but I believe it was early thirties. They had a young woman there in the hostel that was a university student. The older women trusted me and the others for some reason, and they sent her with us by herself to explore the local area. The only one that she could speak to was me. So I spent the whole day with this young woman Bobita talking to her about her life and her plans for the future. She guided us around. She took special care of me. When I got leeches on me, she took them off my leg, ignoring all the other men. That was the most beautiful holiday experience – because I had the companionship of a nice woman and learnt about her culture. When we got back, the older women – her relatives – told me to take her back home with me and marry her. And she would have done if I had asked her – because she comes from the same culture as me, since Indian and Nepalese culture are the same. When we left the hostel, she was sad and she gave us her contact details so we didn’t lose touch. But she was nice but not my type. So I didn’t contact her ever again – I’m not stupid. She would have thought it was something else and I might be a lot of things, but I would never hurt an innocent woman on purpose.

Anyway, I am putting up some of my holiday diaries up on my ‘About’ Page here if anyone wants to read them. As one document ‘Holiday Diaries’.

I forced myself to do the right thing given the situation and the feelings of someone else. What I wanted to do was to take them out of my life completely. Because every time I look at them, I remember what happened. The disappointment. If it was anyone else… But it is not someone else. It is that person. With Girl 1 and Girl 3 – who it was more understandable that she said no so it was easier to force myself to talk to her and be friendly with her – I haven’t forgotten the past. It is not the same any more. Even now, I make sure that there are topics that I won’t ask them about because I don’t want to know who they have or are going to choose over me and I don’t want to think about them and their lives all the time. But this is life. You hide your sadness. Because no one will ever share your sadness with you.

Some Instagram Artists I follow and adore, with brief notes

12.02.2024

Instagram is one of the biggest free art galleries out there. I follow thousands of artists and have been doing so for about seven years now. The contemporary art scene is amazing, inspiring, beautiful. I wanted to share some of the artists in 2D I have been following and a few personal reasons why. These are just a few brief notes before bed time. I am the fan of so many people, and the student (as a digital artist myself). You can find each of the artists on Instagram with the names given.

Waldemar_kazak

Beautiful rendition of the figure. Beautiful colours. To me, the character design seems so full of vitality, so whole. An eye for beauty.

Grantdraws

Thoughtful cartoons, a lot of them about reading. I am a bibliophile so it appeals to me. The drawings have a charming naivety even though the writing can be quite subtle. Always interesting to read.

Itsnotaboutwork

Quirky illustrations of animals usually. Highly enjoyable and diverting.

Leilaleiz

Dark style, beautiful women. Intense themes. Not to be seen at work as scenes can be quite revealing.

Paulwearingillustrator

An amazing, clean and fresh graphic art style that is reminiscent of twentieth century posters. The shapes are always super interesting.

Thedhimangupta

Bright, colourful women’s faces done in a comic book style. Very intense, simplified and super interesting and effective.

Borispelcerart

Chaotic and highly detailed drawings and paintings, often with elements from the human figure. Amazing colours.

Loisvb

Beautiful, charming and cute style and vivid colouring. Mostly female characters that are immensely lovable.

Johnholcroftillustration

Interesting concepts beautifully rendered in this clean and crisp illustration style.

Karljamesmountford

This art is literally incredible: exciting, crowded, enticing. A lot of book covers which is my kind of thing, being as I am so into books.

Danygartman

Everything this guy does is incredible – the style is amazing. Simplicity and detail are married and there is a rich tapestry and blend of colours.

Olivierbonhommeillustration

Crystal clear, vibrant and exciting images. A gift for character illustration.

Megbuddart

Charming, colourful and cute. A good variety of different subjects.

Kunstkrake

Dark themes in bright colours. A lot of focus on the body and the nude. Reminds me of a modern day Hieronymus Bosch

Victongai

Enticing images touched by the influence of Asian art. Painstaking and perfectionist, beautifully crafted images with a lot of life and character.

Justingerardillustration

Brilliant character design in a fantasy/traditional art style. Inventive, beautiful, a crowded canvas and a visual feast.

Zerodeluxe

Black and white vector illustrations from a graphic design background. Effective, inventive, beautiful to look at, inspiring.

Flaroh

Bright, colourful. A lot of themes from mythology. Super interesting and inspiring.

Aj_nye

Vector design from a master. In one word: awesome. Stimulates the imagination immensely.

The Courtesies of Two Warriors; Finally, the Park in the Morning; An Unexpected Present

11.02.2024

My latest piece of non-fiction and analysis which I wrote today (In the series, 2024: Year of the Fight):

https://diaryofaloneman.home.blog/2024/02/11/how-westerners-see-indian-tradition-and-indian-mothers-analysis-of-the-t-levels-tube-poster/

DIARY FOR TODAY:

We have become two warriors. Hardened, crafty. Wise in battle. Whatever anyone thinks of it, it is a war from two opposing camps, two different ways. The two warriors extend each other the sincerest of courtesies. It has become important to be courteous, to obey the forms. We have both danced and duelled with each other a few times before. Both of us know the dances, the courtesies, the forms and the shapes, the whys and the wherefores, the dancers, the dancing, the music, the beat. Both of us are wary, the wariness of the wounded. We watch each other out of the corners of our eyes, waiting for the first moment of the war or the first steps of the new peace. Peace has become unfamiliar, peculiar. There is no time for the dances. There are many bodies in the way of the dances. Still, the two warriors extend each other the sincerest of courtesies. It has become important to be courteous, to obey the forms. We have both danced and duelled with each other a few times before. Nothing is more familiar. Nothing is more uncertain. What is the nature of this new dance? I watch the other warrior to see what the moves are going to be. The other warrior watches me. The game has begun again, but what is the game now?

In the morning, I got up fairly early after managing to get some sleep in the night. So I managed to do meditation, chi building and weights. When you are doing that exercise, you can unleash the Tiger, all the aggression and power. The weights aren’t that heavy – maybe I need more. Because there is a lot inside. I also managed to get in breakfast although – like with the exercise which I cut short – I cheated – it wasn’t my usual, just a bowl of cornflakes and milk. But because I managed to get out fairly early, I could go into the park next to Canary Wharf station. I stood there and some woman came and stood next to me. There was a whole park. But, always, they come and stand right next to you all up in your space. Why? Because we are social animals perhaps. Because maybe she wanted to see what I was looking at in a case of visual envy. Maybe she was mindlessly and unconsciously following me as her guide into unfamiliar territory out of a sense of curiosity.

Someone at work bought me in a chocolate brownie which they had baked themselves. This is perhaps only the second time that someone has specifically bought me a present at work (although my best friend in all the places I work in loans me books I am interested in). It is my personality to remember gifts like that. Because it shows that someone has been thinking about you and wants to make you happy. It shows that they like you. I said it before, and I will say it again: Thank you. It really made my day. Particularly because some people know that I associate chocolate with love (because it simulates the hormones associated with love).

Book haul today:

– The Twentieth Century in Photographs (my PhD included the History of Photography)

– The History of the World in 100 Plants (for the Gardens)

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.

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

The Refugee Boat – Some Thoughts on an Alternative History of Transport

10.03.2022

If you go to a transport museum, the likelihood is that you will see ultra-expensive vehicles which were at the cutting edge of technology. These cars, buses, trains and trams would have had all the modern conveniences and would have been fairly safe, even if safety standards in the past were laxer. In terms of production, an entire army of workers would have been involved in the construction, probably an ‘international’ team (by which I mean white Europeans).

The history you would find in such museums would be progressive, a story of increasing rationality, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, capitalism, big business. A story the rich tell themselves to celebrate the world that they have created: the globalised, interlinked world of transport convenience. Where, theoretically, there are no physical barriers to community, commuting, connection.

Standing out in stark contrast to this ‘Whig’ version of history is the humble refugee boat.

The refugee boat is fairly inexpensive. It is the mode of transport of the poor, the desperately oppressed seeking a better life in the only way that they can given their losses in the lottery of life and birth. The refugee boat, while not the worst piece of technology ever invented, is still pretty primitive. The standard image is the unpretentious dinghy, clearly unfit for the purpose of a long journey by the sea in dangerous waters. Travel by sea is itself one of the longest, most inconvenient, inefficient and deadly forms of travel, where you are seemingly at the utmost mercy of nature. There are no modern conveniences. Hardly any water to drink, hardly any room for food. No toilet. There is no safety. There is probably more than a 50:50 chance of death. What about the production? The workers that made these products were probably exploited in sweatshops in economically less dominant countries around the globe.

The history of the refugee boat is the unadulterated, unpolished history of transport in our times. History is not always written by the victors. It is also written by the losers. The refugee boat is the testament to the fact that our modes of travel are not objectively the best. They are merely fit for the types of people and the societies that use them. The transport history in museums is the product of capitalism and the reign of the rich. The transport history of the undocumented migrants is the product of those that power has missed out, those that capitalism has downtrodden.

The unvarnished history of the refugee boat – which the media presents as a horrible throwback to primitive times, a history which is now culminating in government interception of such travellers and their lives being thrown away like trash somewhere else, as someone else’s problem – is the real history of travel beyond propaganda, advertisement, embellishment, cultural narcissism. This is the real story of the world that the ultra-rich have created: a world where you can’t even travel from one country to another to try and better your life. A world in which you are tied to the place you were born and the lack of opportunities there. Why can’t anyone tell this history?

‘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)