-Kathryn Bromwich

Remember when Morrissey was known for his ground-breaking music and lyrics, and not for being a massive racist cock? Firstly, I should admit that the Smiths are one of the few bands whose entire discography I could sing along to word-for-word. Deep down, I still believe that anyone who doesn’t feel this way must have skipped the Sulky Teenager phase altogether, which, surely, makes them incomplete human beings.

Yet, what with This Charming Man being played to death in every ‘indie room’ throughout university and Morrissey’s increasingly unpalatable views, it is easy to forget just how exhilarating a band they were. Throw your mind back to your teenage years, when the Smiths were the only ones who really understood your literary aspirations, staunch liberalism, loneliness, existential gloom, vegetarian leanings and pathetic love life. And then start reading this book.

Incredibly, this is their first comprehensive biography since Johnny Rogan’s Morrissey and Marr: The Severed Alliance in 1992. And as such it is certainly thorough: music journalist and former Keith Moon and REM biographer Tony Fletcher has been meticulous in his research, procuring exclusive facts through interviews with all the key players (excluding Mike Joyce and, naturally, Morrissey). At 700 pages and over a kilo, even the most obsessive Smiths fan – vegan, brooding, and with a life-size cardboard cutout of a naked Morrissey in their bedroom – will be satisfied.

Early on, Fletcher promises not to focus unduly on Morrissey, but acknowledges that a Smiths biography centred mainly on Johnny Marr would miss out on much of the brio and flourish that made the Smiths what they were. The book makes a good job of covering both of them in detail, while not forgetting bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce, giving ample space to the unfair royalties rates and subsequent court case.

Starting with a fawning intro and an unnecessary reference to 500 Days of Summer, the book finds its stride when it describes, in remarkable detail, the first meeting of Johnny Marr and Morrissey. The two bequiffed young Mancunians, with their shared Irish stock and working class credentials, bonded over their love of Sandie Shaw, songwriting duo Leiber and Stoller, and Patti Smith.

Fletcher then backtracks for two hundred pages to discuss their upbringings and time at school, including Morrissey’s ‘abysmal’ school St Mary’s and his brutal PE teacher, which on the plus side provided rich lyrical inspiration for songs such as The Headmaster Ritual and Frankly Mr Shankly. Obsessed with Coronation Street, 12-year-old Morrissey wrote scripts for it and sent them to the show’s producers, which were routinely rejected.

After leaving school, Morrissey went through what he refers to as ‘the lost years’, which were largely spent living at home with his beloved mother, perfecting his hair, and incessantly writing angry letters to the music press about how punk’s lack of musical sophistication did not please him. A budding writer, Morrissey penned a play which he sent to Tony Wilson (sadly lost, although Wilson remembers that ‘the characters lived on toast’), a lengthy poem about his idol James Dean, and a full-length fanzine about the New York Dolls, whom he later disowned. His close friendship with radical feminist artist Linder is shown as being instrumental in forming his views and personality. During this time, Morrissey also absorbed some important lessons from Bowie (sexual ambiguity, provocative statements) and Oscar Wilde (puns, the willingness to ‘borrow’ whole lines from his favourite songs and films).

These years, however, proved to be necessary: Fletcher claims that Morrissey had first to be a failure before he could become a success, or he would not be able to convincingly sing lyrics such as “please please please let me get what I want, Lord knows it would be the first time.” Morrissey’s sexuality (or lack of it) is sensitively handled, neither confirming nor denying anything but hinting towards the ‘homosexual but probably celibate’ consensus.

Marr, on the other hand, was living a fairly blessed existence. Apart from one occasion when he was pelted with eggs  and fired from the local Coop, at the age of seventeen he was talented, outgoing, had a steady relationship with the love of his life, and his stylish clothes and encyclopaedic musical knowledge made him popular in the Manchester music scene. His appearance at Morrissey’s door is described as ‘saving’ the singer.

Fletcher goes on to describe the band’s meteoric rise to fame and eventual break-up five years later. Each chapter starts with a quote or two, and unsurprisingly there is no shortage of inflammatory statements: “I am somewhat of a back-bedroom casualty. I spent a great deal of time sitting in the bedroom writing furiously and feeling that I was terribly important and feeling that everything I wrote would go down in the annals of history or whatever. And it’s proved to be quite true,” quips Morrissey. The quotes, however, quickly go from tongue-in-cheek to dangerously self-important and pompous.

While Marr’s decision to leave the band is ascribed to the more conventional excess of drink and drugs, Morrissey’s fatal flaw was falling prey to his own mythology. His comments in Melody Maker about post-Motown black musicians and the paranoid claims of personal persecution and murky conspiracies caused many Smiths ‘apostles’ to rethink their opinion of him. The band’s lack of proper management and the difference in lifestyles between drug-free, diurnal Morrissey and the less salubrious rest of the band were both factors which contributed to the band “breaking up in a chippy” in 1987. Fletcher ends the book here, alluding only briefly to Marr’s and Morrissey’s solo careers and the protracted acrimony that followed.

Overall, the quality of writing is variable: generally readable and clear, Fletcher occasionally veers into clunkiness and cliché (“pop music was destined never to be the same”) and the sporadic minor inaccuracy. Somewhat tediously, he details the recording, contracts and managerial discussions in plodding specificity, listing schedules, gigs and meetings without the authorial flair or fun trivia necessary to keep it consistently interesting. His interpretation of the songs is compelling and supported by evident technical musical knowledge, but at times these parts lack clear structure. The background information on Irish immigrants, Thatcher, the Winter of Discontent, and 70’s and 80’s music sometimes feels a bit like padding, albeit interesting and informative padding. Nevertheless, the book is solidly and amusingly written, full of incredible anecdotes, and finds the right balance of conveying affection for the band without being star-struck.

And if your thirst for the Smiths is not quenched by this weighty tome, fear not. Morrissey’s 660-page autobiography is rumoured to be published imminently by Penguin, and while not likely to be a paragon of objectivity and fact-checking, promises to be a rambunctious read.

A Light that Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths, by Tony Fletcher (William Heinemann, 6 Sep 2012)

This review was originally commissioned by Sabotage Times, who then realised they already had a review of this book. D’oh.

-Kathryn Bromwich

Submitted for MA in English: Issues in Modern Culture, University College London, 2009. 

Shorter, snappier version here.

T.S. Eliot’s early work, particularly The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917) and The Waste Land (1922), and David Bowie’s Low (1977), are considered to be ground-breaking in their respective genres of poetry and music. Both antagonise the reader or listener with fragmented language and obscure references, and are united by a similarity in tone: disillusionment with art and distrust of language. Through a discussion of the influence of Eliot on Bowie, this essay will examine the motivation behind the aesthetic choices in both artists, and the ways in which they strive to bring about ‘newness’. The trend in 1970′s rock towards experimentation and intellectualism is well exemplified by Bowie’s interest in literature in 1977; the link between him and Eliot appears to be considerable, and can be seen as a symptomatic example for a wider movement of innovation in music. The focus will be on Low, in relation to Eliot’s early poetry and the critical writings of Eliot and Ezra Pound, in order to illustrate the ways in which Modernist ideas, themselves incorporating musical aspects, function when applied to the field of music.

The disciples of Eliot are numerous, but one who is not often discussed is David Bowie. Passing through William Burroughs, it is possible to establish an indirect influence of Eliot on Bowie. Hugo Wilcken, in his extended analysis of Low, states that Bowie’s lyrics were often composed in a ‘cut-up writing style, derived from William S. Burroughs,’[1] who in turn referred to The Waste Land as ‘the first great cut-up collage’[2] and ‘terrifically important [...] I often find myself sort of quoting it or using it in my work in one way or other.’[3] However, there is also a more concrete link to Eliot. Three years before Low was released, Burroughs interviewed Bowie and remarked:

Burroughs: I read this ‘Eight Line Poem’ of yours and it is very reminiscent of T.S. Eliot.

Bowie: Never read him.

Burroughs: (Laughs) It is very reminiscent of ‘The Waste Land.’[4]

Given that Bowie considered Burroughs to be ‘the John the Baptist of postmodernism,’[5] it appears likely that this encounter would have encouraged Bowie to read Eliot.

Momentarily leaving aside musical and poetic aesthetics, it is worth noting the similarities between Bowie and Eliot from a biographical point of view. Bowie constructs different ‘characters’ in relation to the music he is creating, and during the recording of Low assumed a persona that bore striking similarities to Eliot’s early characteristics: the ‘Thin White Duke.’ Bowie’s new character, much like Eliot, was interested in mysticism and the occult, and both entertained a certain amount of quasi-Nietzschean intellectual elitism, coupled with conservative views. Eliot’s biographer Peter Ackroyd relates that the reactionary poet, in his early years, ‘despised democracy’[6]; similarly, in 1976 Bowie claimed to ‘believe very strongly in Fascism [...] a right-wing, totally dictatorial tyranny.’[7] Nervous and eccentric behaviour is another point in common: Eliot is known to have occasionally worn green face powder and to have demanded to be called ‘Captain,’[8] and there are rumours that Bowie preserved his urine in the fridge to avoid being cloned by aliens.[9] The Thin White Duke’s fashion sense also seems to be modelled on Eliot’s dandyish appearance: pale, thin, with slicked-back hair, austere black and white clothes, a fedora hat and black overcoat (see photos). It is impossible to say what came first – whether a longing for newness, or the interest in Eliot – but both Eliot and Bowie showed similar signs of frustration with contemporary poetry and music.

Both The Waste Land and Low were composed in volatile political times. In the chaotic aftermath of World War One, it has been argued that experience was fractured by factors such as shell-shock, loss of faith in progress, fear, grief and apathy. In poetic circles there was an increasing distrust of language: in his essay ‘The Perfect Critic,’ Eliot laments the ‘tendency of words to become indefinite emotions,’[10] and symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé criticises language’s ‘”pedestrian clarity” full of “plagiarism” and “platitudes.”‘[11] Paul Fussell argues that there was also a gap between a reality that had been wrecked by modern technologies and a language that had been ‘used for over a century to celebrate the idea of progress.’[12] At this time, poetry was mainly discursive, in traditional verse forms, and reliant on a clear understanding of its semantic meaning. Given the fragmentation of post-war consciousness, this traditional form of poetry was felt to be unsatisfactory for commenting on the new world.

In the late 1970′s, Bowie was in Berlin, perhaps the place in which the escalating tension and anxiety of the Cold War were felt most keenly. Due to the concrete separation of East and West comprised in the Berlin Wall, the city was considered ‘a microcosm of the Cold War.’[13] The atmosphere was austere: Bowie described West Berlin as ‘a city cut off from its world, art and culture, dying with no hope of retribution,’[14] and Tony Visconti said that ‘you could have been on the set of The Prisoner.’[15] The dominant form of music was largely guitar-based narrative rock, and Bowie, claiming that he was ‘intolerably bored’[16] with narration, says that his objective for Low was ‘to discover new forms of writing. To evolve, in fact, a new musical language.’[17] However, after the ‘classic’ era of Elvis and early Beatles, the music scene had already undergone several movements towards experimentation in the late ’60s. There were concept albums such as Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and The Who’s Tommy (1969), the prog-rock movement emerged, there was an interest in virtuoso performances such as Hendrix, and in Germany the electronic movement was gaining momentum. Bowie, at a stage in music when everything seemed to have been done before, felt that ‘rock ‘n’ roll is dead… It’s a toothless old woman.’[18] His endeavour to achieve novelty, therefore, seems to operate simultaneously with a fear that nothing new can be done.

In addition to the problematical outside world, Eliot’s and Bowie’s psychological conditions were far from stable. Eliot was diagnosed with ‘some kind of nervous disorder’[19] and composed The Waste Land ‘in a state of extreme anxiety.’[20] Wilcken argues that Bowie was suffering from paranoia[21] and borderline schizophrenia.[22] Both outer and inner worlds became increasingly difficult to express through language: this posed the problem of conveying ‘non-verbal awareness by verbal means.’[23] One of Bowie’s and Eliot’s main preoccupations is a distrust of semiotics, lamenting the impossibility of precise utterance. In Prufrock, the speaker attempts to talk, although ‘it is impossible to say just what I mean,’ and what comes out is ‘not it at all, that’s not what I meant at all.’ The ‘overwhelming question’ that Prufrock cannot articulate, becomes in Bowie a need to say something that seems inexpressible: ‘What you gonna say to the real me, / Ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhhh, ahhh’  in ‘What in the World.’ What is said, if indeed something is, is never revealed. If art were to express the fragmented idiom of shell-shock and war, and of drug-induced, nervous consciousness, music and poetry needed a new ‘language’.

In order to avoid semantic imprecision, both Eliot and Bowie’s work becomes increasingly non-linguistic. The focus is brought towards aspects other than the words. Eliot juxtaposed obscure references and worked through association, making his words deliberately obfuscating:

Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images (The Waste Land Part I, 20-22)

There is a move away from blank verse and iambic pentameter towards free verse, and Eliot concentrated on the poem’s visual and spatial elements, bringing attention to the form of the poem. Lines and stanzas are of different lengths, unevenly spaced and sometimes indented; different sections are divided by lengthy ellipses (the ‘…..’ in Prufrock) and visually alarming capital letters are used, for example ‘HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME’ (II, 141). Similarly, Bowie attempts to eschew words: his collaborator Brian Eno claims that one of the aims of Low was ‘to get rid of the language element.’[24] The music in Low is mainly instrumental, with occasional chanting, and the few lyrics are fragmented and enigmatic. The opening song ‘Speed of Life’ was Bowie’s first instrumental track, and ‘Side B’ is almost wordless. ‘Warszawa’ is in a made-up language, using voice as texture rather than as a vehicle for meaning: ‘He-li venco de-ho/ Che-li venco de-ho/ Malio.’ This recalls Eliot’s ‘Weialala leia / Wallala leialala,’ (III, 290-291) which in turn returns to Dadaist sound poetry. Bowie also foregrounds the artificial procedure of studio intervention: Low relies on synthesisers and distortion of traditional instruments with the Harmonizer, an electronic pitch-shifting device. The relevance of the songs’ linguistic meaning is minimised, while attention is drawn to the process of creating art: the form, indeed, becomes the content.

Bowie and Eliot also draw attention to style by subverting expectations, making us aware of clichéd artistic formulae. In Prufrock, Eliot leads us to expect a romantic poem, but the Laforguean mood change is abrupt:

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table

Many of the songs on Low also defy convention: in Wilcken’s words, they ‘fade out just as the riff is starting to sink in. Just at the moment you think it might be leading somewhere, it’s gone’ (78). ‘Sound and Vision’ starts off in a loop, suggesting another instrumental song like ‘Speed of Life’: however, Bowie’s vocals appear halfway through, change pitch and intonation between lines, and refuse to develop into a structured refrain. The lines ‘drifting into my solitude/ over my head’ are sung in a crescendo, intimating a chorus or climax; on the contrary, the song fades out and ends, creating a sense of unfulfilled frustration. Form begins to merge with content, echoing Eliot’s statement that in poetry ‘we cannot say at what point “technique” begins or where it ends.’[25]

In The Waste Land, the empty spaces on the page suggest an implied score, a harmony that could perhaps unify the inchoate fragments of the poem: it seems to be yearning for a unifying key, perhaps music. The poem moves away from an emphasis on clear semantic denotation, and the form itself creates its meaning. In this respect, Eliot’s poetry can be said to approach ‘pure form’ and therefore, in Walter Pater’s words, ‘aspire towards the condition of music.’[26] Bowie also removes the non-musical elements of lyrics and narrative from his work, instead conveying his meaning through the tone and structure of his instrumental songs, thereby approaching a purer form of music. Given Eliot’s and Bowie’s distrust of language, music is an appropriate form to turn to.

The dialogue and mutual influence between music and poetry is an ongoing one, and has given rise to numerous disputes as to whether music can ever portray emotion exactly. Brad Bucknell points out that there has traditionally been a ‘romantic belief in the expressive potential of music’ (2) notably in Arthur Schopenhauer’s dictum that it is ‘a direct image of the Will itself.’[27] Pound stated that ‘poets who will not study music are defective,’[28] and that they can achieve ‘an “absolute rhythm” [...] which corresponds exactly to the emotion or shade of emotion to be expressed’[29] by incorporating musical elements in poetry, thus communicating at a pre-verbal level. Eliot believed that, though technical musical knowledge was not necessary, ‘a poet may gain much from the study of music’[30] in terms of rhythm and structure. Musical technique can be used to convey meaning through melody, rhythm, tone, tempo and through what Roland Barthes would term ‘the signifying opposition of the piano and the forte.’[31] However, the signification of a polysemic medium such as music is intrinsically imprecise. The more recent critical consensus tends to be that music is important due to its ability for open signification: Mallarmé valued it precisely for ‘its imprecise, evocative effects.’[32] Eliot’s and Pound’s poetry most resembles music in its calculated ambiguity and its emphasis on impressions: their poetry could be seen, in Kevin Barry’s words, as an ‘activity of response as opposed to notions of description or specific naming.’[33] Eliot, Pound and Bowie approach the form of ‘pure music’ in their move towards polysemy, adopting music’s resistance to state anything as ‘truth’.

Instead of attempting to offer a single, clear message and being misunderstood due to the imprecision of language, the works are imbued with multiple unfixed meanings. Several denotations are condensed into single words: Winn states that the poet ‘alters the meaning of a word by multiplying its secondary associations in order to drown out the dictionary definition’ (332). There is an emphasis on polysemy and logopoeia, taking into account secondary meanings and word connotations. Eliot stated that ‘in The Waste Land, I wasn’t even bothering whether I understood what I was saying’[34]: Ackroyd praises it for providing ‘a scaffold on which others might erect their own theories’ (120). The preface to The Waste Land suggests that there is a message hidden in the poem’s fragments, like the Sybil of Cumae’s riddles. Eliot underlines the importance of ambiguity: ‘poets in our civilisation, as it exists at present, must be difficult [...] the poet must become [...] more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.’[35] Similarly, Bowie’s often-abstract lyrics are held together by association and alliteration:

Don’t you wonder sometimes
‘Bout sound and vision
Blue, blue, electric blue
That’s the colour of my room

Bowie’s collaborator Brian Eno stated that ‘the interesting place is not chaos, and it’s not total coherence. It’s somewhere on the cusp of those two.’[36] Paradoxically, the mimetic method can be seen as more accurate for describing a chaotic modern consciousness than a diegetic one. In order to convey thought processes, Eliot wrote ‘What the Thunder Said’ ‘at one sitting in a kind of delirium, rather like automatic writing, aiming to replicate a free-associational structure.’[37] Bucknell argues that ‘the text’s very disruptions are meant to be the sign of continuity with our mode of perception. They are intended to be mimetic of our process of knowing the world’ (109). The works’ deliberate ambiguity, and their reluctance to offer a final truth, reflects the uncertainties of perception and thought processes in real life.

Defying the notion of a single message, Bowie and Eliot also challenge the idea of a single, fixed identity. Eliot maintains a ‘tension between performer and performed,’[38] echoing poet Arthur Rimbaud’s paradoxical ‘Je est un autre’. Both Bowie and Eliot hide their own personality by giving a voice to numerous different characters. In Prufrock, Eliot writes that ‘there will be time/ to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet,’ suggesting a deliberate creation of identity. The Waste Land, originally entitled ‘He Do the Police In Different Voices,’ provided an outlet to the thoughts and speech of ”characters’ which seemed to exist within the personality of Eliot.’[39] These include men, women, and a synthesis of the two: Tiresias, ‘old man with wrinkled dugs’ (III, 228). A voice is given to both the aristocracy and the working classes, ‘O is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said’ (II, 150). Bowie, known for his ‘chameleonic character,’[40] has impersonated alter-egos such as Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke. In the guise of the Thin White Duke, he splits into further additional characters on Low: ‘Be My Wife’ is sung in a theatrical cockney accent, ‘Warszawa’ suggests someone from Eastern Europe, and ‘Breaking Glass’ is performed in a terse, unemotional voice. It is difficult to gauge the artist’s true intention, or which character voices the views closest to his own.

Often, attribution of speech to any one character is problematic: Eliot’s speakers and the characters they refer to are not clearly differentiated. In passages such as ‘when we came back [...] / your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not / speak’ (I, 36-9) it is up to the reader to decide who ‘we’, ‘you’ and ‘I’ are. In Bowie, lines like ‘you’re such a wonderful person, but you’ve got problems,’ and ‘deep in your room, you never leave your room’ could be spoken both by and about his paranoid persona. It is often difficult to assess whether Eliot and Bowie are to be taken seriously or in jest. In The Waste Land, Eliot’s verses ‘veer close to parody or pastiche,’[41] occasionally indicating his lifelong fondness for the music-hall.[42] In Bowie, the passage ‘please be mine/ Share my life/ Stay with me/ Be my wife,’ could be a parody of traditional pop songs, yet Bowie has stated that ‘it was genuinely anguished, I think’[43] (emphasis mine), further reinforcing the sense of ambiguity. The polyphonic juxtaposition of speakers undermines the idea of one central voice or of one ‘correct’ meaning: we are never sure who the ‘real’ Bowie or Eliot is.

In The Waste Land and Low there is a move away from a portrayal of the self or of the poet’s own thoughts: their feelings are projected onto their surroundings and other minds. Eliot states that ‘the progress of art is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.’[44] This is demonstrated in his endeavour to depict the ‘Unreal City’ (I, 60) that was post-War London: Eliot ‘agonised over the fate of Europe represented archetypally in the image of London.’[45] Robert Schwartz has seen this as Eliot ‘transmut[ing] personal experience into something of greater dimension while obscuring its autobiographical origins’ (46). The songs on ‘Side B’ of Low are, on the surface, about places: Warsaw, West Berlin, the Berlin Wall, and East Berlin. The tone becomes bleaker, reaching its darkest moment in the final song ‘Subterraneans,’ in which ordinary language creates inscrutable sentences: ‘Care-line driving me/ Shirley, Shirley, Shirley own/ Share bride failing star,’ defamiliarising normal English words and generating a sense of unease. The beginning is slow, juxtaposing violins and synthesisers, and later a lone saxophone is set against a background of muted electonica; the feeling is one of isolation, appropriate for the living conditions in East Berlin. However, according to Wilcken Bowie saw the outside as ‘a reflection of the self, until you lose sight of where the self stops and the world begins’ (77). On the album cover, Bowie’s hair blends into the orange background, ‘underlining the solipsistic notion of place reflecting person.’[46] The self is effaced with the intention of making art that is universal rather than personal; however, the distinction between outside and inside is not as clear as it first appears.

The interest in place rather than the individual is especially relevant in the light of Eliot’s and Bowie’s locations. They were both on self-imposed exiles: Eliot emigrated from America to England, and Bowie moved to Germany after a few years in Los Angeles. This move towards Europe involved an increase in erudition to culturally distance themselves from America, where according to Eliot ‘the [intellectual] desert extended à perte de vue, without the least prospect of even desert vegetables.’[47] Eliot rejected the increasingly democratised American art scene of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, whose poetry was ‘in plain American which cats and dogs can read.’[48] Eliot’s poetry is laden with literary allusions, often foreign: at the end of The Waste Land, Eliot references Dante, Kyd, Gérard de Nerval, the Pergivilium Veneris and the Upanishad. Bowie left Los Angeles, moving away from the euphoric escapism of the glam, punk and disco, and embraced Europe’s avant-garde music scene. His years in Berlin were a time of intense intellectual study: he ‘amassed a library of 5000 books and threw himself into reading them [...] it became something of an obsession.’[49] Infamously, the feeling of intellectual achievement gave rise to elitism and Nietzschean delusions in the young Eliot and the Berlin-era Bowie. Ackroyd relates that Eliot ‘divided human beings into ‘supermen,’ ‘termites’ and ‘fireworms’ [...] there is no doubt that he felt a certain intellectual superiority’ (96). In 1978 Bowie dubbed himself and Eno the ‘School of Pretention.’[50] This sense of self-importance resulted in a propensity to showcase their erudition through extensive referencing.

In their reading, Eliot and Bowie both encountered occult rituals, oriental religion and Eastern philosophy. While writing The Waste Land, Eliot contemplated ‘withdrawal into the hermitage of a Buddhist monastery;’[51] and ”psychic’ phenomena held a certain fascination for him.’[52] The methods of the occult are related structurally to the open-ended meanings of The Waste Land: Madame Sosostris gives out knowledge in fragments out of which we hope to construct meaning, but there are things which she, too, is ‘forbidden to see’ (I, 54). The poem ends by referencing the Upanishad: ‘Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. / Shantih shantih shantih’ (V, 433-4). The Modernist interest in mysticism filtered through to ’60s and ’70s musicians, famously the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, and features prominently in Bowie. He had an ‘interest in Buddhism,’[53] a fascination with Aleister Crowley,[54] and his work abounds in allusions ‘to Gnosticism, black magic and the kabbala.’[55] The cryptic lyric ‘don’t look at the carpet, I drew something awful on it’ in ‘Breaking Glass’ is a reference to the Tree of Life. Although the interest in Eastern culture and occult rituals is not exclusive to Eliot and Bowie, it underlines their sense that conveying certain thoughts and feelings in standard English was impossible. In their work, they therefore incorporate different perspectives on the world, drawing inspiration from external sources.

One of the most striking similarities between Eliot and Bowie is the abundance and openness of their references to old, foreign, and ‘low’ sources. Another, possibly more conventional way of bringing about change, would be to embrace the new entirely and make a clean break with the past: Frank Kermode states that ‘the urge to be radically new is itself part of an ongoing history.’[56] The manifesto of Futurism in the 1910s was to reject classical art and ‘demolish museums and libraries’[57]; the American Modernist poetry of Stevens and Williams in the 1930s concentrated on ‘the local.’ The ‘robot rhythms’ of Krautrock in the mid-1970s ‘were in the process of eliminating the human altogether from the beat.’[58] Conversely, and perhaps counterintuitively, Eliot and Bowie both allude to traditional forms of their particular art in their attempt to modernise themselves. Eliot argued for a need of the timeless in addition to the temporal, stating that the artist cannot be valued alone but ‘must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past.’[59] Perhaps motivated by a disillusionment with the modern, Eliot and Bowie turn towards their predecessors.

Eliot frequently references classical literature in his work. The Waste Land starts with a reference to spring weather, recalling Chaucer’s ‘Aprille with his shoures sote.’[60] In ‘so many, / I had not thought death had undone so many’ (I, 62-3), Eliot translates Dante almost word-for-word: ‘io non averei mai creduto / che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.’[61] Direct quotes are included as well, from Shakespeare (‘those are pearls that were his eyes’ I, 48) to Baudelaire (‘hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, – mon frère!’ I, 76). Myth was also important: in his essay ‘Ulysses, Order and Myth’ Eliot states that Joyce’s use of the Odyssey ‘has the importance of a scientific discovery [...] instead of narrative method, we may now use the mythical method.’[62] Along these lines, The Waste Land is often said to be based on the quest for the Holy Grail.[63] Bowie, in turn, alludes to old, traditional and foreign music in Low. These include chanting in ‘Warszawa,’ a harmonica in ‘A New Career in a New Town’, a ragtime riff in ‘Be My Wife’, and a saxophone in ‘Subterraneans’. In ‘The Weeping Wall’, xylophones that Philip Glass compared to Japanese bells[64] are used to create ‘the flavour of Javanese gamelan (traditional Indonesian orchestras).’[65]

The allusions to older forms of poetry and music, however, are set against innovative techniques. Eliot’s untraditional versification is at odds with the classical poets he references, and Bowie’s synthesiser sounds especially futuristic when contrasted to ragtime piano jingles. In returning to the past rather than rejecting it completely, Bowie and Eliot seem to question the concept of innovation itself. The method of referencing old and foreign sources differs from other methods of modernisation in its admission that it does not function in a cultural vacuum, and that is not – and cannot be – original. Experimental music combining old and new genres had been done before Bowie, notably in Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967); however, Bowie is set apart from their intentional experimentation by his attitude of disillusionment with art and originality. His creation of personas and unremitting self-reinvention distances him from his music; his embracing of commodified, commercial pop in the 80′s with hits such as ‘Under Pressure’ and ‘Let’s Dance,’ could be seen as indicating a sense of ironic detachment.

The assertion that originality is a myth is a constant source of frustration in both works, and, in itself, becomes a central subject. Eliot believes that he has nothing new or momentous to say: he talks of ‘Nothing again nothing. / Do / You know nothing? Do you see nothing? [...] Is there nothing in your head?’ (II, 120-126) and Bowie laments that there is ‘nothing to do, nothing to say’ in ‘Sound and Vision.’ Ackroyd posits that Eliot ‘was immensely susceptible to [the ideas] of others – the act of creation was for him the act of synthesis’ (106). Brian Eno suggests a similar idea: ‘some people say Bowie is all surface style and second-hand ideas, but that sounds like a definition of pop to me.’[66] In Barthes’ terms, rather than projecting themselves as ‘authors’, entirely original lone geniuses, they are ‘scriptors’, in whose work ‘a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.’[67] They place themselves in the context of past artwork, with no pretence of ‘pure originality.’

The apparently unrelated fragments, however, cohere: the fragments are arranged according to meaningful associative links, even if these are left unclear. Eliot said of Saint-John Perse’s poem Anabasis that ‘any obscurity of the poem, on first readings, is due to the suppression of links in the chain, of explanatory and connecting matter, and not to incoherence’[68]: as Schwartz points out, this description is also appropriate for The Waste Land. No matter how innovative the method, Eliot believes that ‘to conform merely [to any one method] would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art.’[69] Eliot and Bowie therefore bring together ‘particles which can unite to form a new compound’[70]: a synthesis of old and new. Both works, bringing to light the impossibility of originality, are characterised not by an intrinsic ‘newness’, but by a Modernist yearning for the new.

In conclusion, it seems likely that Bowie had first-hand contact with the works of T. S. Eliot. The music inspired by Low could therefore be seen as obliquely descending from literary Modernism. When applied to music, Eliot’s aesthetics result in a disjointed, evocative, largely instrumental effect: a new musical language. Both works are marked by disillusionment with language and a move towards ‘pure form,’ aiming to minimise their dependence on semantic meaning or narrative. They work through associative and mimetic techniques: the content is made ambiguous, giving priority to the form. Different views are expressed through a polyphonic variety of voices, signalling a move away from any single meaning and encouraging a subjective interpretation of their work. The use of old and foreign sources reminds us that art must be considered in its context, drawing our attention to the inspirations that allow it to come into being: the myth of ‘originality’ in art is dispelled. The eclectic fragments in both The Waste Land and Low, then, are held together by a desire for newness, which is nevertheless tempered by a belief that originality is impossible.

[2] William Burroughs. The Third Mind. (London: John Calder, 1979), 3

[3] John May, ‘Meeting with Burroughs at the Chelsea’ (2005) <http://hqinfo.blogspot.com/2005/06/meeting-with-burroughs-at-chelsea.html> [accessed 03-01-2009]

[4] Craig Copetas, ‘Beat Godfather meets Glitter Mainman,’ from Rolling Stone (February 1974) <http://www.teenagewildlife.com/Appearances/Press/1974/0228/rsinterview> [accessed 03-01-2009]

[5] David Bowie, ‘David Bowie Remembers Glam,’ The Guardian (02-04-2001) <http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2001/apr/02/artsfeatures.davidbowie> [accessed 03-01-2009]

[6] Peter Ackroyd. T. S. Eliot. (London: Abacus, 1984), 109

[7]Sarfraz Manzoor, ’1978,’ The Guardian 20-04-2008, quoting Bowie in Playboy (September 1976) <http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/apr/20/popandrock.race> [accessed 03-01-2009]

[8] Ackroyd, 136

[9] Wilcken, 11

[10] TS Eliot. The Sacred Wood. (London: Faber, 1997), 8

[11] In Brad Bucknell. Literary Modernism and Musical Aesthetics. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 31

[12] Paul Fussell. The Great War and Modern Memory. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 169

[13] Wilcken, 58

[14] In Wilcken, 119

[15] Ibid. 112

[16] In Thomas Jerome Seabrook. Bowie in Berlin. (London: Jawbone Press, 2008), 112

[17] In Wilcken, 14

[18] In Seabrook, 35

[19] Ackroyd, 113

[20] Robert L. Schwartz. Broken Images. (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1988), 34

[21] Wilcken, 52

[22] Wilcken, 82

[23] Aaronson in Bucknell, 2

[24] In Seabrook, 114

[25] Eliot 1997, xi

[26] Walter Pater. The Renaissance. (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1998), 86

[27] In Bucknell, 22

[28] Ezra Pound. The Literary essays. (London: Faber and Faber, 1954), 437

[29] Ibid. 9

[30] TS Eliot. On Poetry and Poets. (London: Faber, 1957), 38

[31] Roland Barthes. Image Music Text. (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 151

[32] In James Anderson Winn. Unsuspected Eloquence. (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1981), 326

[33] Kevin Barry. Language, Music and the Sign. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 2

[34] In Schwartz, 32

[35] Eliot 1921

[36] In Wilcken, 68

[37] Schwartz, 32

[38] Keith Alldritt. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets.’ (London: Woburn Press, 1978), 38

[39] Ackroyd, 118

[40] Seabrook, 22

[41] Ackroyd, 117

[42] Ibid. 105

[43] In Wilcken, 97

[44] Eliot 1997, 44

[45] Schwartz, 24

[46] Wilcken, 127

[47] Eliot in James Miller. TS Eliot. (Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 2005), 139

[48] Marianne Moore, ‘England’

[49] Wilcken, 38-39

[50] Bowie 2001

[51] Schwartz, 241

[52] Ackroyd, 113

[53] Wilcken, 80

[54] Seabrook, 36

[55] Wilcken, 7

[56] In Bucknell, 14

[57] Stanley Payne. The History of Fascism. (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 64

[58] Wilcken, 33

[59] Eliot 1997, 42

[60] The Canterbury Tales <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22120/22120-8.txt> [accessed 03-01-2009]

[61] Inferno III, 56-57

[62] Eliot in The Dial, LXXV (November 1923), 482

[63] Schwartz, 14

[64] In Wilcken, 19

[65] Wilcken, 124

[66] In Wilcken, 101

[67] Roland Barthes. ‘The Death of the Author’ in the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. (NY and London: Norton, 2001), 1468

[68] In Schwartz, 37

[69] Eliot 1997, 42

-Kathryn Bromwich

With the hair and ego of Bowie in the late ’70s and the fashion sense of an exotic prince, T.E. Lawrence is one of the few individuals in history worthy of a film as glorious as this. Re-released after a 4K digital restoration, the 7-Oscar winning Lawrence of Arabia on a big screen is a breath-taking experience.

Based on a true story, the film follows eccentric British officer Lawrence in his quest to single-handedly conduct the Arab Revolt of 1916-8 against the Ottoman Turk invasion and to create a unified Arab state. Starting with Lawrence’s death in 1935 in a motorcycle accident and then retracing his career, we follow him in his unlikely rise among military ranks.

Lawrence’s aristocratic origins come through in his calm confidence and classical accomplishments: he is educated in literature, languages and the arts, and is coolly self-composed at all times. However, he is unpunctual, insouciant (‘I may look as if I am being disrespectful, but it is just my face, I can assure you’) and generally a bit of a maverick. Yet, he is a frighteningly clever war strategist: he congregates an army out of nowhere and leads them to an unthought-of victory at Aqaba. His officials, though wary of his unconventional methods, recognise his achievements and grudgingly promote him to Major and then to Colonel.

Lawrence is fascinated by Arabic culture, winning over the admiration of the locals with his ability to ride camels through deserts with hardly any water, willingness to try local foods and customs, and the fetching way he wears his exotic robes. ‘Where are you from?,’ he is asked. ‘Oxfordshire. It is a place of fat people.’ ‘You are not fat?’ ‘No,’ he replies, ‘I am different.’

‘Introducing’ Peter O’Toole in his first major role, the film hints at soft-spoken and vaguely camp Lawrence’s speculated homosexuality; however, the point is never explicitly made. O’Toole and Omar Sharif (as the smouldering Sherif Ali) engage in some intense homoerotic confrontations, and Noël Coward said that if O’Toole had been any prettier, the film would have been called ‘Florence of Arabia’.

The cast is stellar, with remarkable performances by Claude Rains as a calculating but shrewd politician, Alec Guinness in blackface as Prince Feisal, and Anthony Quinn as the temperamental and proud Auda abu Tayi, leader of the local Howeitat tribe. The film has an entirely male cast. Women are only seen twice, in brief non-speaking roles: once in a tent where they look at the male war heroes, and once as victims in a village that has been razed to the ground. Yet, rather than shoe-horning in some women just for the sake of gender balance, this feels honest and appropriate for a war film in a largely Muslim country.

Lawrence’s commanding officers vaguely debate whether he is ‘going native’, to which they conclude that ‘he would if he could’. However, he is never allowed to forget the colour of his skin: wherever he goes, his towering physique, Prince Charming blond hair and sky-blue eyes cause the locals to both idolise and gently mock him, and he becomes affectionately known as ‘Orenz’. In one unnerving episode, a Turkish commander strips him naked and starts to fondle his skin, which is ‘so pale, so fine’.

The adoring locals’ unwavering loyalty leads to Lawrence developing messianic delusions of Morrissey-scale proportions. ‘I know I am not ordinary,’ he tells his superior in one scene. An American reporter sent to the region ‘to find a hero’, a man who will inspire his country to join the war, finds Lawrence to be the man for the job. There is a wonderful scene of Lawrence in his new Arabian robes of fine white silk, playing around in the sand while lovingly inspecting his shadow – childish, carefree, and totally in love with himself – before realising he is being spied upon.

Lawrence is not a simple character, and we see him change before our eyes. His initial horror of bloodshed and unwavering morality gradually give way to a much more ambiguous relation to warfare. By the end of the film he has become simultaneously more bloodthirsty, disgusted and disillusioned, ready to return home.

The film is almost four hours long, including a fifteen-minute intermission featuring specially composed music. In spite of this, David Lean does not put a foot wrong with regard to the pacing: the length is appropriate for a project as ambitious as this, and the lengthy crossings of inhospitable deserts put these few hours into proportion.

The dialogue is razor-sharp and consistently funny, with Monty Python-worthy insults between warring factions of Arabs (‘thy mother mated with a scorpion,’ quips Anthony Quinn), yet it is in turns grand, caustic and dramatic when it needs to be.

In 1962, in the aftermath of the Suez Canal crisis and the collapse of the British Empire, the film’s message was clear: the poor directionless locals, fighting against each other over trifles, needed clear leadership and Britain was the one to provide it. In the wake of the Arab Spring, the timing of this restoration is apt, but the dubious politics around British intervention remain uncomfortable.

However, what a fantastic experience to see this film on a big screen. The stunning scenery, majestic set-pieces of battles, deserts, and people slowly emerging from the horizon, all framed by the iconic soundtrack by Maurice Jarre, make for a cinematic experience not to be missed.

It will be interesting to see Werner Herzog’s upcoming Queen of the Desert, a film about Gertrude ‘the female Lawrence of Arabia’ Bell, featuring Naomi Watts, Robert Pattinson and Jude Law.

-Kathryn Bromwich

Apart for the admittedly problematic blackface scene, Antonioni’s L’eclisse has largely withstood the test of time. The BFI recently revisited some of the Italian director’s other films, including L’avventura (1960) and Red Desert (1964), yet L’eclisse would appear to be a more timely choice. This exploration of the stock market, juxtaposed with the characters’ ennui and solipsism, strikes a chord with the disillusionment rife in a post-Lehman Brothers economic climate.

Antonioni’s muse Monica Vitti stars as literary translator Vittoria, who at the start of the film breaks off a relationship with her academic, socialist boyfriend. Vittoria is like a modern-day Madame Bovary: well educated, elegant, and hopelessly bored. She is certainly enigmatic. Her thoughts and motivations are never fully explained, but we are left to understand that she is full of restlessness and joie de vivre (she is flown about in a small private plane, recklessly demanding to be flown into a cloud), and that she is unhappy in a middle-class sort of way (she is fascinated by Africa, where she assumes life must be simple and easy).

Just before the film disappears into an insufferable cloud of narcissistic first-world problems, Vittoria makes an unexpected encounter. The film follows her as she visits her mother at the Rome Stock Exchange, effectively gambling away her money after the death of her husband. There, she meets an uncannily young-looking Alain Delon, playing the fast-living, no-nonsense City boy Piero.

Everything about him should make us, and Vittoria, recoil in horror. Piero is loud and rude, and shrugs off clients who have lost millions because of him with a breezy “the stocks go up, and they go down, what can I do about it?” He can’t sit still for a second, is an amateur philanderer, and has a penchant for blondes. The stock market is presented as being like a boxing ring, with the investors shouting, squabbling and cheating their way to affluence. Like gambling, it attracts lonely and vulnerable people, not least of which is Vittoria’s mother.

Yet, after a long and tortuous courtship full of mixed messages on both sides, Vittoria allows herself to be seduced by him. Perhaps it is boredom, curiosity, or the lure of sleeping with the enemy. We are not told: all we are given are shots of her inscrutable and statuesque face staring into the distance. Both of them are young, good-looking, and extremely unlikeable.

The setting is what gives the film its power. Closer to the Italian neo-realist tradition than much of Antonioni’s other work, L’eclisse is set in an eerily empty post-war Rome. There are several symbolic, enigmatic features that appear throughout the film: a strong wind, a piece of wood, a horse and cart. The effect is of a disjointed, fractured society in which the protagonists fit uneasily.

The final scene is stunning yet subdued: a seven-minute succession of silent, near-still street scenes of Rome, uninhabited and desolate. The viewer is left to infer that the relationship has fizzled out. According to Monica Vitti, the title refers to the fact that it is ‘the story of a love that lasts for a short time – as brief as an eclipse’. There is no drama and no fallout, just a kind of emptiness that is, deliberately, neither explained nor satisfying.

-Kathryn Bromwich

Who would have thought that old age and child murder could be so amusing? In recent times, Beckett seems to have garnered a reputation for po-faced highbrow literature, yet the play’s sharp comedic wit and raunchy double entendres should come as no surprise (’Stiff! Well I like that! And me heaving all over back and front’). An optimist he is not, but Beckett is a master of both gallows humour and poo jokes. Here, the humour is amped up with cartoon-style sound effects and fast, sharp delivery worthy of a screwball comedy.

On the other hand, Beckett is not usually one to employ tropes as bourgeois as plot, character or setting. The Unnamable is more typical: 200 pages of unpunctuated ramblings from a limbless, perhaps bodiless entity in the middle of a darkened space, talking about the nature of language and existentialism. Or How It Is, a prose piece about two figures walking through mud, which rhythmically repeats a handful of key phrases with the occasional slight variation.

In All that Fall, conversely, you get all of these devices. The play is said to be Beckett’s most Irish and strongly autobiographical: the setting is the Irish town of Boghill, based on Beckett’s native Foxrock, near Dublin. The action is structured into three distinct sections: the trip towards the train station, the station itself, and the walk back home. The characters are fully fledged, with names and back stories rooted in real settings. There is foreshadowing, suspense, and finally a big reveal. Yet, one would be pushed to call the play ‘conventional’.

The story follows septuagenarian Maddy Rooney as she tries to get to the train station in time to meet her blind husband Dan after a Saturday morning’s work. As she walks there, she encounters a succession of male friends who offer her a lift in increasingly modern forms of transport, but her journey is beset by obstacles. When she finally arrives at the station, late, she finds that the train is delayed by a huge quarter of an hour, the reasons for which we find out later.

Beckett’s recurring preoccupations appear again and again in his work, and this play includes many of them: Irishness and exile, old age, rotting, non-existence, Dante, the failure of language to represent the world, the inadequacy of God and religion, and dung. The piercing critique of organised religion comes in the form of pious Miss Fitt, whose Dickensian name marks her out as the ridiculous and strange character she is.

The piece’s origins as a radio play are underlined rather than effaced in this stylised production, in accordance with the wishes of the famously strict Beckett Estate. The actors carry scripts, which impede their movements and interactions with each other, and the sound effects are deliberately incongruous. Eileen Atkins’s Mrs Rooney is svelte, yet her footsteps are made to squelch grotesquely, to match the character’s four hundred pounds of audible flesh.

This transposition from the radio to the stage is generally smooth; however, the theatre production hints heavily towards a certain interpretation of events, which could perhaps have been left more open to discussion. The ending is, necessarily, much more ambiguous in the radio play, where you can’t see the characters or their reactions.

The production is an acclaimed one, directed by Sir Trevor Nunn and with Sir Michael ‘Dumbledore’ Gambon as the cantankerous Mr Rooney. Yet the standout performance is from Eileen Atkins: funny, warm, and played with genuine pathos where necessary. It would be misguided to look for any trace of feminism in the play – like many of Beckett’s women, Mrs Rooney embodies the typically female faults of garrulity and melodrama – although, in fairness, the male characters hardly come out of it well either.

To play this role, Atkins turned down a lucrative film role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street involving a sexy scene with Leonardo di Caprio, which then went to Joanna Lumley. Yet, judging from the gusto with which Atkins embodies the role of Maddy Rooney, it looks like she’s having much more fun at the theatre.

-Kathryn Bromwich

If the Twilight saga were a pizza, it would be a Domino’s. Not any particular flavour: whether it is Pepperoni Passion, Mighty Meat or Vegetarian Supreme, it all tastes exactly the same. The Twilight films, similarly, display vestiges of an unnecessarily complicated plot, but true fans know what really matters.

And that is Edward Cullen. Dreamy, brooding Edward Cullen, who listens to Chopin and who the other girls at school find ‘totally gorgeous, obviously’. He is also really wealthy. Oh, and since girls like diamonds, his skin sparkles in the sunlight. Or, depending on your taste, what really matters is buff Jacob, whose aversion to wearing a shirt is matched only by his total lack of a personality.

The first film lured in the legions of fans, with its relatable high school plot about sulky teenagers seduced by dangerous men: it was stupid as hell, but hilariously so (Edward: “And so, the lion fell in love with the lamb”, Bella: “What a stupid lamb”, Edward: “What a sick, masochistic lion”). Director Catherine Hardwicke managed to give it some Thirteen-style gravitas, and it was even, incredibly, critically lauded by the Guardian.

And then the plot went totally bonkers. Highlights included a shot of Bella sulking in a chair for a full year following an apparent break-up with Edward; a tense scene in a tent in which the ‘plot’ demands that hot-blooded Jacob spoon Bella in front of her boyfriend; werewolves talking to each other in weird Batman voices; blood milkshakes; and the most disturbing Caesarean section ever to appear in a 12A.

The strangest thing is the weird insistence on marriage, babies, and opposition to non-marital sex. Nothing in the first film implies that jaded teenager Bella will turn into a married über-mum cooing at her baby within less than a year. A lot has been written about whether Bella is a good feminist role model or not, which perhaps imbues the saga with a significance it should not have. Yes, it is a film where the protagonist is a girl, but it is blatantly just a rather odd sexual fantasy of Stephenie Meyer’s, and as such should not be over-analysed. It also spectacularly fails the Bechdel Test.

If it weren’t for the awful Twilight: New Moon, the final instalment of this would easily be the worst of all. Nothing can justify the last book’s meagre plot being spread thinly over two non-films — except monetary considerations. Everyone’s face looks more CGI’d than ever, which thankfully gives you something to concentrate on while minor character after minor character is trotted out onto the screen. One of these vampires can manipulate the elements, another can control people’s minds, then there are two evil Russian ones with funny accents, an Irish vampire who says one line, some generically exotic-looking women who just kind of look into the distance, and zzzzzzzzz. Emotion is conveyed through extreme close-ups rather than genuine acting. Literally nothing happens for what feels like hours. And let’s not even go into Renesmee and the whole Jacob ‘imprinting’ thing.

In the book, the final confrontation is avoided thanks to a nauseating plot twist where Bella saves the day: she is so strong and full of love that she can protect her family and her clan, so the nasty evil Volturi vampires simply go away. This would make for incredibly dull cinema, so in the film they introduce a twist. They manage to find a way to end the saga that is somehow even worse, yet also kind of brilliant. I wouldn’t want to spoil it but, although it does involve dozens of beheadings, in the end no one really gets hurt. And then there is an excruciating montage of K-Stew and R-Patz gazing longingly into each other’s eyes throughout the other films.

And yet, there is a time and a place for Domino’s. You know you will feel dirty and uncouth at the end of it, and you don’t enjoy it all that much even while it is still happening. But in a masochistic kind of twist, that is partly the point. I have seen (and looked forward to) all the Twilight films. I would never dream of saying they are good or even tolerable, but they do provide a bizarre, badly-scripted, Mormon-inflected respite to the banalities of daily life. And now I’m off to read the entirety of Proust to atone for my sins.

-Kathryn Bromwich

It has been an ongoing battle since 1959, when C. P. Snow gave a lecture on The Two Cultures. He posited that the intellectual life of western society was split into two: the sciences and the humanities. This talk continues to be relevant today. While science is rightly perceived as one of the most valuable ways we have of obtaining information about the world around us, the humanities are, worryingly, often dismissed as a superseded luxury that deserves no further discussion, and certainly no funding from the taxpayer. Among the humanities, philosophy is often singled out with cries of irrelevance, conjuring up images of mildewed Oxbridge dons dusting off their tweeds.

In two separate East London talks, public intellectual Julian Baggini and child adolescent psychiatrist Clio Bellenis attempt to redress the relevance of philosophy in today’s world, with particular regard to the discipline’s relation to science. Both speakers tackle similar topics: truth, knowledge, neuroscience, the limitations of science when it comes to ethics, and philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett. However, while both speakers cover an impressively wide range of topics, only one of them comes out of it well.

Julian Baggini, Why Philosophy Matters, 20 September 2012, Bishopsgate Institute

Having written eruditely about the thorny issue of Philosophy v science: which can answer the big questions of life?, Baggini is well placed to defend philosophy against ever-increasing accusations of obsolescence. Rosy-cheeked, charming and eloquent, he remains objective, open-minded and interesting throughout his talk; challenging yet clear. He talks about many of the issues covered in his latest book, Philosophy: All that Matters. This spans a range of essential philosophical topics such as narrative, identity, animal minds and atheism, and eventually he even has a convincing go at defining the meaning of life.

He tackles these issues in a tone that is straightforward yet not simplistic, structuring his arguments around a recent survey of philosophers’ world-views. The idea is that, although the fundamental questions of life are set to remain unanswered, some views are more likely than others: for example, 82% of those interviewed agreed that the world exists. Other common views are believing that science can tell us about how the world works (75%), not believing in the existence of a god who created and controls the universe (73%), and a belief that moral values are real (66%).

The main distinction that he perceives between different philosophical schools of thought is of certainty versus uncertainty. On the one hand, he argues, philosophers like Plato and Descartes have a rigid view that any knowledge worth having needs to be beyond questioning. In the other camp Baggini includes Aristotle and Hume (and himself), who agree that in most fields ‘true’ knowledge is impossible, especially in those fields that are most directly applicable to our lives, so we should be realistic in our expectations and try to be content with a probable or educated guess. Science, therefore, is not seen as being at odds with philosophy: its findings can support some philosophical viewpoints, but neither can provide definitive answers. Both science and philosophy, Baggini argues, are useful sources of knowledge, and should work together rather than against each other.

Dr Clio Bellenis, Is philosophy relevant to science?, 24 September 2012, Hackney Attic

As part of the ‘Hackney Skeptics (sic) in the Pub’ series, ‘medical doctor’ Clio Bellenis attempts to establish that philosophy can be of worth to scientists and sceptics in developing critical thinking. The previous talk by Martin Robbins on pseudo-medical practices such as homeopathy in the developing world was, by all accounts, fascinating and well-researched. Which makes it all the more baffling when Bellenis delivers a talk that an undergraduate should be embarrassed about. This blog post on Hampshireskeptics.org gives a good idea of Dr Bellenis’s unlovely and aggressive style of rhetoric. Essentially, there is a good idea lurking beneath it – although hardly a novel one – but Bellenis dismisses anyone who disagrees with her by just calling them ‘stupid’. While Baggini concedes that many religious people are well-educated and intelligent people, Bellenis presents atheism at its most intolerant and unhelpful, adopting the same kind of condescending tone as saying ‘oh dear’ to rubbish someone else’s claim.

Bellenis’ presentation jumps around a lot, starting with a sweeping dismissal of all continental philosophy (singling out ‘awful’ Derrida for no apparent reason), then there is a bit about equality and John Rawls, then some vague stuff about religion, and at one point she asks the audience whether they ‘have ever heard of Noam Chomsky’. Superficial yet patronising, the talk meanders around without a structure, objectivity, causal links between the different sections, an ultimate direction or even a clear ending. Although she calls on Daniel Dennett as a figure she admires, at this link you can hear him completely disagreeing with Bellenis over the importance of neuroscience to philosophy, free will and ethics. A couple of times she loses her plot, and starts several sentences with an unpromising ‘oh yes, I also wanted to mention this’. Essentially, I agreed with most of the things Bellenis said, but her talk needed a better structure and a less aggressive tone, otherwise many of the points she makes risk backfiring.

However, don’t let this put you off. This initiative organised by the Hackney Attic is clearly worthwhile and inspires lively debate. The last Hackney Skeptics in the Pub was thought-provoking and well-received, and the next talk by physics teacher and writer Alom Shaha, Science versus Religion in the Classroom sounds like it will be an interesting discussion of a vitally important topic.

-Kathryn Bromwich

Is it a witty revision of Sex and the City seen through Woody Allen’s thick-rimmed spectacles, or the over-hyped creation of an over-privileged girl? Many viewers will predictably side with James Franco’s preachy and humourless take on it.

Sure, men don’t come out of it well: revolting venture capitalists, substandard thespians unwilling to ‘compromise on their art’, nice-but-dim small-town boys, bland indie musicians, or sleazy dads having a mid-life crisis. And yes, the girls are bitchy, self-obsessed, and prone to falling out with one another. But what makes this show bearable is the fact that writer/director/creator/protagonist Lena Dunham knows this. Unlike most television shows, the girls are not presented as perfect role models of achievement, virtue and beauty: they are realistic, flawed and, yes, goddamn irritating.

Franco also speciously argues that Lena Dunham is not well-placed to write about or act as a struggling writer, seeing as she is (now) so successful. Yet, following this circuitous logic (in which he has presumably misunderstood the concepts of both ‘writing’ and ‘acting’), surely world-famous actor, Yale grad student and self-satisfied Renaissance Man Franco is in no position to judge a show aimed at directionless young people who are struggling to find their place in the world and, more prosaically, a job.

In a nutshell, the story follows four female protagonists who live in New York and occasionally have sex with men. There are, of course, similarities to Sex and the City: the atavistic figures of Writer, Uptight, Sex Goddess and Career Woman transform slightly into Writer, Uptight, Sex Goddess and Virgin. But the difference is that here, they are not going on and on about Manolo Blahniks and Roberto Cavalli in the same lobotomised and consumeristic fashion of Carrie & co. Instead of presenting an unfeasibly successful lifestyle to aspire to, these girls struggle to pay the rent, have bad sex with inappropriate men, throw tantrums, depend on their parents, and have badly paid jobs in unglamorous offices. In Britain this kind of TV is hardly a novelty, but in the US it is being hailed as nothing short of revolution.

Girls acts as a travelogue into Brooklyn hipster life, perfect for anyone who wishes Gossip Girl would move away from the glitzy Upper East Side to Vanessa and Dan’s artsy bohemian friends in Williamsburg or Greenpoint. The closest UK equivalent is probably VICE spoof Dalston Superstars, or Nathan Barley. Of course, seeing as ‘hipsters’ are intrinsically annoying, the show pre-empts this criticism by slathering itself in self-loathing.

Dunham’s Hannah Horvath is Everygirl: overemotional, neurotic, a bit like a female Woody Allen. Jaded ‘artist’ Jessa, who has ‘the face of Brigitte Bardot and an arse like Rihanna’, fluctuates between being mesmerising and unbearable. Hannah’s best friend Marnie is bored of her long-term boyfriend and with her reputation for being ‘uptight’, and innocent Shoshanna spends her time watching reality TV and hating herself.

The show works best when it looks at small details, which are acutely observed: from a screenshot of Hannah’s Twitter page, you can glimpse her humdrum previous tweets (of which she has 4,140), that she is following 902 people, and that her followers are 26. The show’s zeitgeisty elements are current and will be recognisable to mid-20s viewers: apps, unpaid internships, overhearing your housemates having sex, and stalking exes on Facebook. Less interestingly, however, when the show tackles ‘issues’ such as abortions, STDs and – the worst taboo of all – virginity, it does so in a smugly provocative way.

Let’s face it. It’s not The Wire; it’s not even South Park. The characters are one-dimensional, deeply flawed and profoundly annoying, and some of the comedic conceits stray into farce in a way that a more mature writer might have been able to rein in. But if you’re a 20-something facing the alienation and indifference of city life and office jobs after a totally useless humanities degree, it’s consoling to see PLU struggling with the same predictably mundane problems as you.

Postscript. The lack of diversity on the show has received a perhaps disproportionate amount of attention in the media. Dunham could have responded, rightly, that most privileged, middle class hipster types tend to be Caucasian: after all, it is not her fault that there is racial inequality in America. I can’t speak for Brooklyn, but living in Hackney it is obvious that there is a stark divide between the largely non-white people who have lived here all their lives and the (usually) white university graduates who work in the media and shop at delis who have recently moved into the area. This is obviously not because of any inherent difference between races, but because of tragic social and economic inequality in the UK, which unfortunately is often correlated to race. This particular criticism of the show therefore seems to me to be misplaced or, at least, exaggerated. The nepotism, on the other hand, is much more annoying…

-James Piper

It has become impossible not to mention The Scream when talking about Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch. This is precisely why an exhibition that relegates his most famous work to just a brief cameo is more than welcome. The key theme running through Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye, is that there is much more to Munch than angsty introspection. True as that may be, there’s no escaping the deep sadness that permeates his work and this is the feeling that resonates long after leaving the gallery.

This exhibition seeks to recast Munch as an innovative, experimental artist of the 20th century, rather than the troubled and melancholic figure that often comes to mind, painting at the tail end of the nineteenth century. Showcasing his paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture and even film, The Modern Eye presents us with an artist caught up in the fresh, new and exciting ideas of the day.

Born in 1863, Munch was raised in Christiania, Norway’s capital city, later renamed Kristiania and then Oslo. After a rather bleak childhood, which saw him witness the deaths of both his mother and sister by tuberculosis, Munch spent his twenties mixing with a bohemian circle of writers and artists, sporadically taking off to Paris and Berlin in pursuit of creative enlightenment. However, a nervous breakdown in 1908 saw him return to Norway, by which point he had come to be seen as an important figure in the art world.

Munch’s paintings are the stuff of nightmares; gaunt and ghoulish faces glare at you from all sections of the canvas, expressions are obscured and exaggerated as they melt into the scenery, from which they seem almost inseparable. There is nothing to split subject and object. The surroundings in which Munch’s figures find themselves interminably trapped become merely an extension of their mood and, by association, the artist’s own emotional state. Munch’s paintings serve to signify himself.

But enough of the inner turmoil and intense self-examination. As heavy as this weighs on the exhibition, it isn’t the point being made here. Two rooms in the gallery are dedicated to Munch’s experimentations with photography, whilst one room showcases four short films made with a handheld Pathé-Baby film camera that he purchased when visiting Paris in 1927. Another room presents us with what are essentially elaborate set designs painted as part of a collaboration with theatre director Max Reinhardt, who at the time was working on a Berlin production of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts. The impression of Munch that this exhibition admirably, though unsubtly, tries to conjure is that of a restless and forward-thinking artist grappling with the modern world.

Restless no doubt, but the modern aspect is not so convincing. Although clearly inspired by developments in photography and film, the majority of the photographs on display portray the artist himself, invariably wearing his characteristic solemn expression. The four films combined last all of five minutes and suggest nothing more than a passing curiosity. Though they populate an entire room, the set design paintings seem to be distractions from what Munch really wanted to paint; sad figures with bowed heads, haunted by some private grief. Indeed, the six paintings of the Weeping Woman that immediately follow the The Green Room paintings depict just that.

Panic in Oslo, Munch’s response to the fears of shortages triggered by the trade blockade against Germany during the First World War, is placed in a section of the exhibition titled ‘The Outside World’. That this requires special mention is a testament to the fact that it’s the interior world that dominates here. Once you start to resist the curatorial nudges towards modernity and reflect on the subjective and personal qualities of the works, they begin to communicate something that very much comes from the heart. We’re back to inner-turmoil and self-examination.

On the surface, the abstract paintings that fill room 11 are almost Kandinsky-esque. However, when you learn that these vibrant and colorful experiments depict Munch’s distorted vision following a haemorrhage in his right eye, they are suddenly endowed with a tragic quality. In a way, this room encapsulates the overall effect of the exhibition. Experimentation and modernity give way to something more timeless and universal – personal anxiety.

This pathos reaches its climax in the final room. In Self-Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed, painted towards the end of his life, Munch stands between a less than subtle reminder of his own mortality and the bed upon which he might die. Gaunt and ghoulish, he has become one of the figures of his earlier paintings. Or rather, the mask has been lifted. To the left of this painting lies the exit, through which you leave with a profound empathy for a man who was very much caught up in the artistic developments of his day, but was first and foremost caught up with something altogether more private.

-Kathryn Bromwich

Between the first and the last page of this remarkable and singular novel, newcomers to Bernhard will be surprised to find only one paragraph break, neatly dividing the book into two exact halves: one of thought and stasis, and one of, er, very little action.

Left-wing academic Franz-Josef Murau lives in a self-imposed exile in Rome, where he consorts with the local bohemian arts intelligentsia. He lives in a sumptuous Renaissance palazzo overlooking the Pantheon, and sustains himself by ostensibly teaching German literature to his eager student Gambetti, while instead inculcating him, over leisurely strolls and coffees, with a deep-seated nihilism. The book starts with Murau receiving a telegram that tells him his parents and brother have been killed in an accident back in Austria. This unleashes a cantankerous, unsentimental internal monologue that shows Murau is keen not to romanticise his parents and brother after their death. For the following hundred pages, we are treated to a diatribe describing his hatred of his entire family (dead and alive, with the exception of academic Uncle Georg), his hatred of Austria, and specifically of Austria’s Catholic National Socialist mentality, of photography, diplomas, Goethe, and three ring binders.

The monologue quickly marks Murau out as an unreliable and not entirely likeable narrator, prone to exaggeration, repetition and petty grudges. His thoughts, however, presented in Bernard’s virtuoso prose, are compelling and full of vitriolic wit. His misanthropy is matched by a love of culture, a passion which his family does not share. The author plays with the ambiguous overlap between himself and the character. Both are criticised in their home country for being a ‘Nestbeschmutzer’ (one who dirties his own nest); there are some meta bits about Murau recommending Thomas Bernhard to Gambetti, and Murau talks at length of writing a work called Extinction.

Upon hearing news of the accident, Murau has to head back to his family’s luxurious estate in the Austrian mountains, magnificently named Wolfsegg, for the funeral. The staunch, efficient work ethic of Central Europe, symbolised by Wolfsegg’s agricultural lifestyle, is constantly pitted against the chaos and vibrancy of places like Rome or Cannes. The company he keeps in Rome – including an archbishop and the finest female poet of his generation – are deified, while his two sisters, who we are repeatedly assured are no beauties, and especially his dead mother, bear the brunt of Murau’s anger.

Politically, Murau is a confused figure. With typical subtlety of feeling, he hates utterly the petit bourgeoisie and the upper classes that he belongs to, and wildly romanticises (and patronises) ‘simple people’ such as his family’s gardeners. Yet, we slowly find out that he has no compunction about receiving a substantial monthly allowance from his parents while well into his forties, in order to fund his Life of Thinking.

There is something distinctly Beckettian about the style, worldview and general ethos of Extinction. Although admittedly minimal, however, the plot provides a well-observed and very tangible setting for the multi-faceted characters. The effect is a strikingly sharp, unique exposé of the political and social contradictions inherent in 20th century European life.

-Kathryn Bromwich

About fifty pages into Lanark, the homonymous protagonist walks into a mouth at the side of a road, sliding down feet-first into a mysterious sanatorium where the doctors and nurses set about curing his dragonhide. This sets the tone for the rest of the story – or at least half of it. The monumental work is comprised of four books, starting with Book Three. The Epilogue, which appears a few chapters before the end of the book, provides a meta-deconstruction of the book itself, including references to all the authors Gray has plagiarised, such as Franz Kafka and Flann O’Brien.

Half of the book is set in a dystopian fantasy world where there is no sunlight, and where the inhabitants have to contend with a corrupt and impenetrable bureaucracy. Lanark is a mysterious outsider, a man of few words who is quickly befriended by the charismatic local debauchee Sludden and his group of fawning hangers-on. The other half of the book, more prosaic but just as riveting,  is set in mid-Century Glasgow, following the adventures of Duncan Thaw, art student and all-round catastrophe of a human being – ostensibly based on Gray himself.

It took Gray thirty years to write (and illustrate) this book, and this is apparent throughout. Linguistically, politically, poetically, it is magnificent and poignant, while always remaining eminently readable and full of humour. However, the funniest and most scathing aspect of the book is Duncan Thaw: a hilariously pretentious and revolting amalgam of Stephen Daedalus and Ignatius J. Reilly.

-Kathryn Bromwich

From their last album Cinder (2005), which got as close to 3-minute pop songs as the Dirty Three have ever been, with Toward the Low Sun the trio have returned to the more improvised and unstructured sound of their earlier work. Gentle and seemingly aimless strumming is interrupted by violin melodies and riffs, giving it a staccato quality that is sometimes almost jazz-like. The angrily buzzing feedback, however, gives the album a dark and disconcerting undertone. The tunes are less catchy than we’ve been used to in the last few records, and even upon repeated listens it’s a strangely amorphous kind of sound, interspersed with striking moments of beauty that are all the more rewarding for their unexpected appearance. On record, the full impact of the album is not immediately apparent, but in the flesh the Dirty Three bring it to life.

Cargo is an unusually trendy venue for the band. Their last appearance in London was at the Southbank, and they can often be found at festivals such as I’ll Be Your Mirror or All Tomorrow’s Parties. Tonight’s show is organised by ATP, and the small venue provides an intimate setting for the gig — so intimate it sold out in minutes. There is no support act, and Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White waltz on to the stage with swagger. The trio play a number of songs from Toward the Low Sun, and a few well-chosen gems from their back catalogue. The two-hour gig averages out at a satisfying 11 minutes for each song or, rather, for each elemental soundscape. Ellis and White stare intently into each other’s eyes, while Turner strums along, Thurston Moore-esque.

Ellis is wearing a smart suit jacket, which he soon removes to reveal a silk purple shirt with pink polka dots, several buttons open and chains of gold bling adorning his chest (some great photos here). Thankfully, he is refusing to grow old gracefully, much like a certain friend of his, and this is great news. His repeated quips at Bono and usually-successful attempts at humour, coupled with high kicks, screams and manic dancing, make for a hilarious and energetic spectacle. Nevertheless, the music is taken seriously: the band’s scratchy elegance is on full display, and the sound is as shambolic and raw as ever.

Setlist

Encore:
Sue’s Last Ride

- Cargo, 7 June 2012

-Kathryn Bromwich

That The Immoralist (1902) was criminally ahead of its time is a given. In a pre-Chatterley, pre-Burroughs, pre-Henry Miller era, André Gide’s candid and unjudgemental depiction of an outwardly immoral and selfish man came as a bolt from the blue. Now the modern world has more or less caught up with it, and Gide’s work reads as freshly as if it were published today.

Brilliant Parisian scholar Michel, married to the delicate Marceline partly out of duty to his father, partly out of boredom, grows sick with tuberculosis. In his slow convalescence, he discovers a joie de vivre he had never known: in his own words, ‘daylight acquired an unhoped-for radiance.’ Once found, however, this feeling proves difficult to hang on to, and Michel finds that he can only recapture it in the company of young boys.

Like in Hesse’s Siddhartha, the protagonist first experiences the world of the intellect, and is later on in life awakened to the possibilities of bodily pleasures. While the former transcends the mind and body dichotomy to achieve a state of Nirvana, the latter unsuccessfully tries to balance the two, resulting in existential anguish and dissatisfaction. The conversations with his nihilistic acquaintance Ménalque express dialectically the difficulty of finding a balanced stance in relation to society. Yet he is not a figure altogether worthy of hatred: there are elements of Dostoyevsky’s innocent Prince Myshkin in Michel’s frank attitude to his feelings, and Gide’s unwillingness to condemn him makes the reader makes the reader question their own standpoint.

Highly innovative and pithily written, it proved to be a milestone for 20th century literature, influencing Camus and Sartre, among others. The novella encapsulates the spirit of the following decades, prefiguring the early 20th century interests in primitivism, sexual instincts, and repression.

-Kathryn Bromwich

“Tell me about your encounter with the squirrel.” In the opening scene of Into the Abyss, Werner Herzog’s apparently light-hearted question immediately digs deep into the heart of the film. The pastor being interviewed, up to then cheerful and full of platitudes, gradually crumbles and starts to cry. Although he can brake his car for a squirrel, he says, there is nothing he can do to stop the execution of the young man he is about to administer last rites to.

This is the latest in Herzog’s string of recent documentaries, and explores the issue of the death penalty in the United States. The choice seems almost too straightforwardly political for Herzog, whose preoccupations are usually more metaphysical and, well, recherché. However, Herzog is not only preoccupied with the question of whether or not the death penalty is immoral: he establishes early on that he is firmly against it. The film goes further, focusing on the disturbing impact of the execution on the individuals who actually have to perform it, the effect the murder has on the families, and, most importantly, what the motivations or reasons behind the crime could have been.

Herzog chooses a single, gruesome case to address the wider topic. Jason Burkett and Michael Perry, who were teenagers at the time, are accused of murdering a woman, her teenage son, and his friend. The woman had been baking cookies when she opened the door to them. The object of the crime, horrifically, was a joyride in the woman’s new red convertible. Herzog does not shy away from the futile and brutal nature of the offence, showing in painful detail precisely what happened. There is no doubt that the defendants are guilty, although both accuse the other and plead total innocence. Burkett is sentenced to life, Perry is sentenced to death.

Herzog aficionados will be familiar with his ability to find the weird and the uncanny in even the most normal circumstances. With this group of characters, who range from the simply grieving to the deeply disturbed, he finds a new level of strangeness. Despite his limited interview time with the defendants, Herzog’s penetrating questioning brings to light their most disconcerting characteristics. Both Burkett and Perry demonstrate cold, psychopathic qualities and subtle signs of mental illness; however, it is never clear whether this is a result of the long incarceration or the cause of it.

Perhaps the most shocking character of all is the wife of Jason Burkett, who met him after his incarceration whilst on his legal defence team. Described by Herzog as a “death row groupie”, she smiles beatifically when speaking of her “totally innocent” husband, who is in jail for life for the murder of three people. Due to prison security they have shared no more than a kiss, but in a grotesque kind of Immaculate Conception she has somehow become pregnant with his child.

The only small shortcoming, perhaps, is Herzog’s trademark use of choral music. In his previous works, the music is matched by spectacular backdrops in the Amazon rainforest or the Antarctic. While the subject matter here warrants dramatic music, the contrast with the drab prison surroundings is at times disproportionate. Majestic and grandiose, the music jars slightly with the visual understatement of the film.

Thought-provoking, unsettling and brutal, Into the Abyss is a restrained film with an after-kick, the impact striking fully a few days afterwards. The tone is balanced and non-judgemental, but at the same time we are never left in doubt as to Herzog’s own opinion. The most interesting part, however, is the film’s study of the human heart: the depths it can descend to, the terrors it can put up with, and the things it can’t.

-Mirka Virtanen

I really liked it. But I am easy to please, and the Tate rarely disappoints. Visually, I liked the show. And in terms of yet another lesson in history of art, I liked it. I feel like I learnt something: I thought that, as an artist, Yayoi Kusama was victimised. Victimised into being a woman and being crazy and obsessive – that is what I was taught at university – and every single review of this exhibit does use the words compulsive and obsessive either together or separately (always be cautious of those two words when used in any relation to a female or womanhood in general) – and, also, during my walk around the exhibition space, I did overhear someone saying ‘I know she has mental problems… that’s probably the biggest influence.’

But hey-ho. The lady who came up with that (and it does make it worse that it was said in a very matter-of-fact, almost indifferent, tone of voice), was clearly missing the obvious. I know not everyone in London can read but I do assume that the target audience of the show are all literate people, and thankfully, at the Tate, they are so generous with the information, it’s like wowza I need to write this down so that I remember and I can quote it to someone as I would have just thought of it myself when I went to see this exhibition, I just got it, what a great artist, I just got it by looking at her work.

Anyway, lady, you get a blurb per room. That is fourteen rooms. Fourteen chances to get it right. And then you get the artwork. The text is just there to acknowledge that no matter how upper middle class your social status is, your talent might not be abstract thinking. And that is where you missed your chance. Tate’s exhibition does not focus on Kusama as a bunny boiler crazy woman. It is a retrospective of the work of an artist, who constantly and continuously stages herself as a character in a fucked-up society that is also beautiful, and ever-changing, and challenging to live in.

The really good, standard Tate-thing about the show is that it takes you by the hand and guides you through the six or seven decades (I’m bad at maths; Kusama started in the 1940s, however long that makes of it) of, in this case, staging-self-through-art. It’s all chronological and clear and interest-provoking, question-evoking and pretty, even, and sometimes slightly disturbing, maybe, depending on what you classify as disturbing. Bit by bit, the show sets the artist as part of both social and artistic canons of the time, starting from the fragile and somewhat delicate early paintings and works on paper, and ending at the ultimate statement of the un-accessible artistic self (whether you’re trying to catch an escaping notion of the artist or yourself, all you get is surface): the Infinity Mirrored Room.  It’s beautiful, by the way.

In between the beginning and the end of the exhibition, there are a thousand things possibly worth talking about, however definitely more worth seeing. The chronological order and display of the work enables the viewer to easily track down the possible influences and events behind the development of Kusama’s artistic career. Her art, presented in this light, rather than offering an alternative understanding of the world from an outsider’s point of view  ‘in the predominately white, male New York art world’ (which is, nevertheless, touched upon: Room 6, ‘Walking Piece’), it expands the notions of all major post-modern art movements from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art, Minimalism and the beginnings of installation art. Also, her initial performances profoundly connect to the rise of hippie culture in the sixties.

She did it all. Something that none of her white, male, New York art-world contemporaries chose not to do but instead, they busied themselves in perfecting their set disciplines. In 1973, she moved back to Japan, checked into rehab, and living in the hospital’s nest of calm and quietness happily ever after, she continues to explore her experience of the decade that started our obsession with the self.

-James Piper

Winter Timber, 2009, oil on canvases (36 x 48″ each)

As an exiled northerner living down here in the big smoke, I feel an almost obligatory respect for Bradford born David Hockney. Fortunately his latest exhibition at the Royal Academy, A Bigger Picture, confirms that this respect is most certainly due.

There’s no denying Hockney’s infectious enthusiasm. Despite a long and remarkably prolific career stretching back to 60s, this is no retrospective. The older pieces on display serve to contextualize and inform an abundance of recent work produced over the last ten years. Indeed, if there is one word to describe this exhibition, it is abundant.

Having left Bradford in 1959 to study at the Royal College of Art, Hockney soon went on to leave the grey charcoal skies of England for the sunbaked highways and luminous swimming pools of Los Angeles. The second gallery sets the scene; two brilliantly dreary sketches of what could be any grim northern town are promptly left behind by the wild and surreal Flight into Italy – Swiss Landscape, culminating in a huge depiction of The Grand Canyon spread across a jigsaw of canvases. The inadequacy of a single canvas is a recurring theme throughout the exhibition. In his insatiable quest for a ‘bigger picture’, Hockney is forever seeking new ways to do justice to the raw and unmediated experiencing of ‘seeing’.

After hearing of a close friend’s terminal illness, Hockney returned to Yorkshire in 1997. He began painting the Yorkshire countryside, taking as his subject the rolling hills and winding roads that lay between his mother’s house and his friend’s deathbed. These stylized, hyperreal landscapes somehow avoid sentimentality in their vibrant immediacy. Produced from memory, they don’t suggest the passing of a golden era so much as they reveal an active and lively imagination.

Hockney’s later paintings of the Yorkshire countryside, of which there are many, are produced from direct observation. From an early set of charming watercolours through to the giant oil paintings he is famous for, there is evidence here of an almost obsessive love for the landscape of his youth. It is as if he has stumbled across something he hadn’t seen before and is feverishly striving to pin it down. Perhaps it’s a discovery that radiance and colour is not limited to the exotic and can often be found closer to home.

Just as Cézanne painted Le Mont Sainte-Victoire over and over again, seeing something new in the scene each time, so too is Hockney captivated by the effect of the changing seasons on particular spots of the Yorkshire countryside. One gallery is devoted to seven huge paintings of Woldgate Woods, all depicting the same viewpoint at different times of the year. The result is striking and expertly diverts attention away from the recurring objects in the scene, towards the extraordinary variations in light and contrast cast on these objects by the differing weather conditions. There are echoes of Van Gogh in the enormous Winter Timber, with its vivid purple foreground set against brooding blues and greens, and of Monet’s Water Lilies in the sheer size and presence of the paintings. Having earlier rejected the camera as a representational device, Hockney doesn’t seek to relay the facts of a scene, but the visceral impression it leaves on the viewer.

Not all the pieces on display are successful. In their quest for scale and magnitude some of the paintings lose out on texture and detail, seeming a little crude upon closer inspection. Also, Hockney’s experiments with the iPad, whilst demonstrating an admirable vitality and openness to new forms of expression, are given a little too much prominence. No amount of technological wizardry can replace the sight of paint on canvas; physical evidence of the artist’s thought process, which can’t ever be attached to an email.

However, these flaws are a testament to Hockney’s sheer energy and constant drive to renew his work. In both its successes and failures, this exhibition astounds.

-Véronique Ward

Gang Gang Dance is one of those bands whose CD sounds can never quite express the true awesomeness of their music. See them live, however, and you can guarantee to be blown away. Hailing from New York and largely described as an experimental music band, Gang Gang Dance make full use of their array of synthesizers, percussion, and more generic instruments to provide a musical experience that although not unique is certainly enthralling.

ULU is the perfect venue for this kind of band. Not unheard of but not of stadium-playing proportions either, Gang Gang Dance has the kind of loyal following that thrives in the square blandness that is characteristic of so many University-based venues. Somehow the surroundings provided by  this canteen/bar-cum-music hall work wonders on this kind of performance, where the band is all that’s needed to transport you somewhere a little more epic.

Add an entrancing video loop serving as a background to the performance and you’re in another world entirely. The neon, swirling, multiplying images fit their music so well that the audience barely notice themselves transfer from static to mobile state in their distraction.

A mellow start gives just a taste of the set to come as the band warm with a folkier sound of Adult Goth, which slowly builds before erupting into the burst of electro magnitude that characterises them so well. Truly happy to be playing to the capital’s finest, the energy and good nature between band members sweeps its way over the crowd and serves as a great accompaniment to the better-known MindKilla and Glass Jar amongst other favourites.

Popular choice of encore Thru and Thru wraps the set up leaving the audience pleased but wanting more. As one co-punter comments, very few are the gigs which you don’t want to end — and Gang Gang Dance definitely does this statement justice.

-George E Harris

Until 15 April 2012

Grayson Perry’s reign of terror is dissipating.  The British Museum has offered an outstanding series of special exhibitions in recent years, but for several months there has only been a confusing “art exhibition” of his unremarkable sculptures.  Opening this week, Hajj – journey to the heart of Islam is one of the Museum’s trademark explorations of a religious practice, combining history and artwork to educate the visitor with a consistent theme.  You can now save the price of a ticket to Perry’s circus for a fresh experience of everything the Museum does best.

The new exhibition is set in centre of the museum, in the dome shaped Reading Room, and is split into ten loose partitions.  On the way into the room, the Muslim call to prayer can be heard faintly in the background.  Along with an introduction to the 5^th pillar of Islam, there is a collection of quotations and images of those who have made the pilgrimage.  The Hajj is described as “a journey in space to the centre towards which one has always turned one’s face in prayers”, which sets the tone in the exhibition’s task of sharing with non-Muslims an idea of the experience and undertaking.

The exhibition is not merely a study of Islam.  Like recent exhibitions including Treasures of Heaven, the metaphysical origin of the pieces is described from a secular perspective.  The five different pilgrimage routes that took prominence throughout history are presented as glimpses into the lives of those who travelled them.  There are many of the books, pieces of navigational equipment and items of clothing that ancient and medieval travellers took with them. The most impressive of these items is a large palanquin used to transport the Sultans to Mecca as recently as the 1920s.  While the focus is on history at this point, it’s disappointing that the dates and claims of the Koran are related as fact.  This was probably a pre-requisite of King Abdullah’s support for the exhibition, but the blurring of the boundaries between legend and fact tarnishes the quality of the experience.

The most impressive pieces follow this section, and explore the textiles used to clothe the Ka’ba, the cube shaped ‘house’ at the centre of the sanctuary in Mecca.  The woven door to this building is exceptional, a sumptuous work that heaves with the detailed script woven across its vast expanse.  There is also a short film featuring some stunning aerial shots of the modern day pilgrimage, and breathtaking photographs of the entire sanctuary crammed with neat rows of worshippers.

Before the ending section that deals with the journey home, the curator has included a series of works of art capturing the Hajj.  The best of these is Ahmed Mater’s photographs comparing the thousands of pilgrims to minute circles of iron filings.

While Hajj does not contain such jaw dropping pieces as past exhibitions like Kingdom of Ife and Book of the Dead, it is a welcome return to form for the British Museum, and will educate and inspire visitors.  The exhibition breaks new ground in what it offers, and provides a moving centrepiece to the museum’s wealth of historic and artistic wonders.

-Véronique Ward

I often have trouble with contemporary art. Too much of the same old ideas bouncing off one another. However, some weeks ago I stumbled upon something which made me get down from my cynical high horse and actually enjoy my contemporary art experience: Nathalie Djurberg – aided by her collaborator Hans Berg – presents ‘A World of Glass’, a small but moving exhibition hosted by the Camden Arts Centre in Finchley Road.

The exhibition, like many of its predecessors, lends itself well to the space provided by the Camden Arts Centre and takes on a quite basic form. Two rooms – dark as dusk ebbing away – project two films each. Accompanying these is music composed by Hans Berg; a soundscape that is little more than glass tinkling and provides a background that only helps make the projected scenes all the more haunting and disturbing.

Made of rough plasticine and using the ‘claymation’ technique, each short film introduces characters in the midst of confrontation with rather unpleasant situations. The environments they are set in are dark and give little indication of their location, making them feel all the more nightmarish and thrusting the viewer into a zone of intense psychological discomfort.

This is perhaps unaided by the inclusion in the gallery space of life-sized props matching those that appear in the films. The viewer is made to feel like they are very much a part of the unpleasant reality of the characters’ fates, which unfold at an alarming rate. It is in this state of mind that we witness the protagonists’ disintegration, each in such a way that is uncomfortable to watch yet difficult to turn away from.

Further unnerving is the blatant sexuality of the scenes, evoking sado-masochistic reverse bestiality which Nathalie Djurberg has used to touch on human feelings of vulnerability, discomfort and despair. Even more disconcerting is the uncertainty projected by the characters’ apparent mix of fear and arousal in the face of their disintegration.

The Camden Arts Centre opens late on a Wednesday and makes the most of its evenings. On the night of my particular visit the centre had prepared a screening and presentation about fairytales and their evolution through time, giving an additional level of perspective to Djurberg’s work. Here we heard how popular stories have progressed from violent, sexual accounts to tales of human kindness and lessons in morality. Djurberg has used her work to revisit their original form, and does so particularly effectively.

-James Piper

Behind its obvious charm, The Artist is a deeply affecting tale about the perils of pride and the redemptive power of love – all said without a single word being spoken.

That a black and white silent film has won two Golden Globes and is expected to storm the Oscars is both remarkable and incredibly refreshing. Amidst the suffocating information overload of the modern world, it is immensely enjoyable to see a film celebrating the subtle and exquisite art of visual storytelling.

George Valentin, played by Jean Dujardin, is the hero of the piece; a dashing silent movie star whose palpable charisma (and penciled moustache) seems to transcend the need for dialogue. With a single look to the camera he can command his audience. However, as sound starts to creep into cinema in the form of ‘talkies’, Valentin’s silent magnetism fast becomes obsolete and his vain and stubborn refusal to adapt his act proves to be our hero’s tragic flaw.

At the height of his fame, Valentin encounters the impossibly pretty Peppy Miller, played by Bérénice Bejo. After being clumsily knocked past the police line outside a film premiere, Peppy falls into George’s path and lands him a cheeky peck on the cheek – the first spark in what unexpectedly grows into a very moving love story. As Peppy goes on to pursue a film career, happily embracing the advent of sound in cinema, the very man who facilitates her ascension collapses under uncharacteristic self-doubt. Yet for all his self-absorption, George’s apparent affection for Peppy ensures that we vouch for his cause throughout, hoping for the reconciliation that his love for her might bring.

The Artist is a beautiful film. Its perfectly balanced treatment of universal themes is played out through a series of incredibly well executed gestures, routines and motifs. At one point George catches his reflection in a shop window, his head positioned above an expensive suit on display, and with a wistful half-smile communicates a lifetime of yearning and shattered dreams. Another scene shows George and Peppy exchanging farewells, a long-shot depicting him descending mournfully down the staircase as she strolls upwards to the heights of fame and success. These moments are made all the more poignant by the film’s ravishing and romantic score composed by Ludovic Bource.

More than just a clever and intellectualized pastiche, The Artist draws on the techniques of the past in order to support its wonderful story. Although ridden with references to films throughout history, no prior knowledge of the silent movie era is assumed or indeed necessary. This is a genuinely touching fable about fame and success, hubris and love.