NOT The Charge of the Light Brigade

 

 

In a desperate attempt to get my mind some way away from the interminable “None Of The Above” election of a right-wing dingbat to head up what used to be The Conservative Party and therefore the Brexit Failure that is Britain, I turn to Art.

     Admittedly I can find plenty of examples of works that would reflect what is going on in Britain at the moment, with perhaps Goya’s etching of “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”, or perhaps Bosch with “The Ship of Fools” or even Lady Butler’s “Charge of The Light Brigade” (and yes, I do know that the title is wrong, the brigade is wrong, the war is wrong, the enemy is wrong, and the outcome is wrong for the original painting) but in the popular imagination (and we are, after all in the right-wing world of alternative facts) the painting shows the valiant and deeply stupid charge of horses against artillery, an exercise in Crimean futility and therefore all the more applicable to ‘modern’ Conservatism as exemplified by None of the Above.

     But I want to get away from all that.  I want escape from the realities of life and find solace in Art.

     Except, the more I study art, the less I find that I can use it to exist in that illusory world of appreciation that I thought that my studies would let me access.

     If you study Art History or Art Appreciation nowadays, the one thing that art courses force you to do is to link the art to its time and its society.  The Great Artist concept of creation where a supremely gifted Man (women have only relatively recently made it into the pantheon of greatness!) produces a Work of Art that transcends time and space and lives in a sort of artistic void where It alone exists and where the viewer can truly contemplate it as a separate entity, a calling of soul to soul.

     The concept of the artist as a lonely genius, existing only for their art and starving in a garret if necessary, rather than compromising integrity by bowing to the dictates of mere commercialism, is a tempting fantasy.

     Van Gogh we are told sold no paintings (or just a couple) in his lifetime, but he went on painting.  And he also went on being supported by his brother, Theo, so Vincent could go on producing the paintings that had so little (literal) currency while he was alive, and we also have the letters that the brothers sent to each other which are well worth reading.

     Artists have to live and they need money.  Blake did drawings for Wedgewood for a catalogue of china; Turner churned out popular prints for commercial exploitation when he was younger; atheists painted religious art for wealthy church patrons; portraitists flattered their sitters; Warhol, well, Warhol exploited exploitation and made Art out of artfulness, or something!

     I suppose that, for me, the ideal ‘absolute’ painting would be one of Monet’s water Lilly canvasses.  Living and being brought up in Cardiff and having access to the National Museum in Cathays Park meant that I could go (for free, except for the imposition of museum charges by the Conservative government under Heath of evil memory) and see the Davies Sisters’ Bequest to the museum.

     The Davies sisters were the daughters of coal owners who had an interest in art, knew Vollard the art dealer and bought extensively and then bequeathed their artistic riches to the nation.  In what I often take pride in describing as the greatest collection of Impressionist paintings outside London, I was able to enjoy Renoir, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Sisley, and more (and yes, I do know that not all of those painters are comfortably contained by the term Impressionist) at my leisure and pleasure.

     The paintings I always came back to were the three water lily paintings by Monet, with my favourite being the most abstract.  When I was younger, I used to think when I looked at it that it was a sort of solemn communion between the painting and my callow self.  Nothing else existed.

     Except, of course, things did.  And do.

      Quite apart from where the Davies sisters got their money and how it was made, there is the whole question of why they bought Monet when they did.  How did Monet get to be famous and his paintings collectable?  And why collect paintings at all?  What does a painting really show what does it really represent?

     Before we get bogged down in the philosophical questions about the production, sale and display of art, let’s just consider a simple, practical element in the mythology of Impressionism.

     In the series of paintings that Monet completed he chose subjects like the façade of Rouen Cathedral, haystacks, and lilies in one specific pond, trees.  He painted thee subject multiple times at different times of the day and with different viewpoints.  As opposed to the previously highly finished canvasses of the previous century and of many of his contemporaries his canvases often looked more like sketches, his brush strokes were large and obvious and there was rapidity to his work that made it look almost spontaneous.

     Previous artist had usually made sketches of details or scenes en plein air that they would work up later in the studio.  There could be pencil sketches, charcoal or pastel or watercolour, but oils were something that needed more effort as colours needed to be made when you needed them, the pigment being mixed with oil.  The sketching then was limited by medium.  It was the production of ready mixed oil paint in tubes that made it possible for artists to take oil paint with them into the countryside and produced oil paintings in the open air away from the studio.  Renoir is reported to have said, that without the invention of tubes of ready mixed oil paint, Impressionism would never have happened!

     So the sketch-like spontaneity of Impressionist canvasses is a direct result of the industrialization of oil colour production – the mechanical and prosaic having a direct effect on the artistic and rarefied!

    

And I have already typed myself into a calmer frame of mind.  Art wins again!

 

Differences

It’s not just the language that makes things foreign.

I remember when I was younger and going to France by boat that it was the smell of Gauloise that told me I was not in the UK, that distinctly un-Players-like smell that reeked of foreignness!  That and the denim wearing surly workers with the said ciggie hanging from the sides of their mouths!

It is, so often, the small things that make you stop and think, or stare. 

I was fascinated by schoolchildren in France shaking hands with each other!  Bizarre - and what a coincidence that that word is of French origin!  The fact that the French mother of the (French) exchange student that I was staying with used the breadknife to scratch a cross on the baguette before she cut it for us to eat was also odd.  My French counterpart also had the use of a Solex motorised bicycle when we poor British kids were nowhere near the age where we would be allowed to own and ride such a thing!  And he smoked!  Altogether foreign!

I have now lived in Catalonia long enough to regard other Spaniards as foreign, when I compare them with the Catalans that I know.

Catalonia has, famously (and rightly) banned bullfighting so the central bullring in Barcelona has been converted into a shopping centre. 

Flamenco is not, absolutely not, Catalan and I have observed a positive shudder of revulsion from some of my Catalan friends when Flamenco music is laid down behind advertising images of Spain on the television: rushed frilly frocks, stamping feet, clicking castanets and Arabic inspired ululations are not the stuff of Catalonia.  Which does not mean that I understand my adopted region/country’s cultural effusions any more than the gyrations of snake hipped, tight trousered writhers!

The national dance of Catalonia is the Sardana.  This is a circular dance where people (men, women, children - if they know the steps) join hands and execute a series of sideways steps with hands raised to shoulder level.  It is like very sedate Morris Dancing, but without the funny clothes, sticks and bells.  And it seems to go on forever accompanied by music from a wind band of raucous instruments that seem to hark back to the music making in churches before the advent of the more melodious pipe organ.  They are fascinating if mystifying; democratic, and mildly hypnotic.  The Sardana is everything that Flamenco is not: calm, contained, regimented, and urbane.

Then there are the Castells - the ‘castles’ of people (Castellers) who form structures by standing of the shoulders of a gradually emerging tower of people.  The highest towers are 10 persons high - ten levels of people standing on each other’s shoulders.   

 It sounds unlikely and absurd, but viewing the construction of these towers is a strangely moving experience.

Once the structure is firm and developing the castellers are accompanied by a band that plays the Toc de Castells on instruments called Grallas (a variety of long, wooden oboe-like instruments) with rhythm provided by drums called timbals.

There is keen competition between the various Collas or groups and competitions are sometimes televised - though watching is never as exciting or involving as actually being there.

There is an element in my thinking that echoes the sentiments of Pierre François Joseph Bosquet when viewing the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea, “C’est magnifique, mais ce ne’est pas la guerre: c’est de la folie.”  But, people don’t (usually) die building these human castles and they have become an essential element in the Catalans presentation of their culture to the world.  And it is a ‘folie’ that has been exported to many other enthusiastic countries, including the UK.  Well, ‘vive la difference!’ as we say in Britain.

But, there are some things that make you stop and think, and then shake your head in disbelief.

Look back to the picture at the top of this blog.  Not a remarkable photograph, rather messily composed indeed.  But look at it carefully and then answer the following question: which of the condiment containers contains the pepper?  The one on the left or the one on the right?

If you are British, you might ask whether this is some sort of trick question, the answer being so obvious, but bear with me and make your decision.

You said the one on the left, didn’t you?  Obviously you did because, just as obviously, it is the pepper pot.

But it was not!  The single-hole container was for pepper and the ring of holes was for salt!  And it was not a mistake!  This is what the Catalans and the Spanish do!

I was as shocked as I was when I found out in a first year university linguistics class that not everybody had used the word, “cree” when crossing fingers when playing a childhood game to claim immunity.  I discovered that ‘cree’ was confined to South East Wales and parts of the West Country!  While other outlandish terms such as ‘fainites’ or ‘barley’ or ‘scribs’ or the snobbish sounding ‘pax’ were used with familial confidence by otherwise normal fellow students!

It was a salutary lesson, teaching us that our (until then) assumption about something we had never questioned was not as secure as we had thought. 

And if something as basic as our word for a childish truce was incomprehensible to the majority of our fellow students, then what else might need to be rethought? 

Well, that was the lesson that I drew from the experience, and have thought about often since.  And read the Opie’s book on the Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, I thoroughly recommend it - though the studies that they largely founded have developed somewhat nowadays!

Oh yes, and there is a suggestion about why the difference in the salt and pepper might have developed. 

The British, it is suggested, were more likely to put a little pile of salt on the side of the plate and dip food into it, therefore the single-hole would be perfect for forming the pile. 

It is further suggested that pepper was an expensive spice and not one that could be merely sprinkled with abandon, remember that in the C15th it could take half a day’s work by a craftsman to earn enough to buy just 100 g of pepper, so not something you would sprinkle with reckless abandon - presumably we Brits had cheaper supplies!

It has also been suggested that the restriction to a single-hole for salt might have something to do with health, restricting the amount of salt to benefit a healthy diet?  Whatever the reasons, it was shocking to find that a time-honoured assumption was, yet again, called into question by ‘other people’ doing things differently.

Presumably I didn’t learn the lesson sufficiently the first time round and so I needed the reinforcement of surprise. 

So like us, and yet so different!