Alex Josephy on Sussex modernism at the Towner

This is not a Modernist poem

Too South-eastern for a start,

too far from city ways.

It plants its feet on the chalk downs,

is gazing out to sea, on the lookout

for a holiday weather front,

an enemy submarine’s periscope,

Ivon Hitchens, Day’s Rest, Day’s Work, 1960

a leaky boat carrying hopeful souls.

Too literal, unable to quell its desire

for the huge blessing of a breaching whale.

A float of Sussex butterflies, jewel blue

is definitely not a Modernist view.

It offers me too many words,

too much of a liking for adjectives.

These aren’t Modernist lines;

however much I try to hold them straight

they keep veering off across sheep-cropped grass

meandering widely down the Cuckmere

before they find the shore.

I lose an hour, picking up otter shells,

distracted by detail.

NOTES:

Written in response to the explanations of the term ‘Modernism’ displayed as part of the exhibition. I was interested in the controversy around Vorticism, which insisted on abstract images mainly associated with urban life, versus art such as the Sussex Modernist paintings, made outside cities and located in particular, identifiable places.

A Dissident Retreat

Oh blessed head, hold the striplings from the narrow sea

David Jones, from ‘In Parenthesis’

A studio facing the waves

should be a little bowl of peace

brightened by a salt breeze,

calmed by sea lullabies.

But the tide is always high

in this beachside house;

it swallows the balcony, spills

into the unfinished painting.

Water colours shiver the sky,

accumulate in clouds

that spread dark rumours

across the dissolving line

between this look-out

and what he’s not forgotten.

He sweetens the room

with a holiday deckchair,

flowers in shell colours.

But as he starts to paint, the chair

holds out a stretcher, the asters

stand watchful in their vase.

NOTES:

I loved David Jones’ delicate, thoughtful paintings of the view from his studio in Portslade, made around 1927. Suffering from shell shock after World War I, Jones produced paintings that seem to be haunted by memories of the trauma he had recently experienced, across the sea that lay just beyond his balcony. The quote is from Jones’ epic war poem, set in the classical era but relevant to his own times too.

Laetitia’s Window

Shattered Windowpane and Feather

Laetitia Yhap

Does she start with the sky?

She relishes her watercolours,

Shattered Windowpane and Feather by Laetitia Yhap

Laetitia Yhap

coaxing them to melt

in front of her brush,

weather scrolling, mauve

to dove to pink,

a lush apricot band,

then rainy sludge over the sea,

everything sliding down

to a ship that sledges

the tilted horizon.

Then perhaps she scatters

swifts, a swoop of inky arrows,

letting them stretch

a translucent curtain of air

between herself in the studio

and all that distance.

But now, here’s the window,

its angled frame.

She sketches the jug on the sill

holding a tall feather,

the one she likes to draw.

Now she sees how it’s trapped

inside the casement,

that it’s lost its wing. Furious,

her paintbrush riots

across the page, smashes

the glass, carves a jagged star,

an open invitation

to whoever would dare to leave.

NOTES:

Laetitia Yhap painted the view from her Hastings studio in 1974, a time of transition for her. I liked the way the broken window suggests a kind of liberation.

Gluck, late paintings

I

Still life with a a scallop shell and blossom

You would have known how myrtle pleased

Aphrodite, twined into love tokens.

Plain enough, this scrubland plant, to flourish

in your still life, a scallop shell behind it

fanning into a sandscape, pink, brown, ivory,

holding the myrtle spray in its flat palm.

Pilgrim shell, at rest in a grey-green swirl,

it celebrates the common beauty of myrtle

whose flowers fizz with stamens,

small explosions of pleasure against dark leaves

that seem to ripple and flex with the joy of it.

A pilgrimage might end happily here.

II

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

It’s like that shot in Jaws

they call a Zido - Zoom In, Dolly Out:

three white frames one inside the other

as if you’re simultaneously moving closer,

fascinated by this stranded fish head,

and at the same time, horrified,

rushing away. How can I understand

this to-and-fro between

nature study and Memento Mori?

You’ve carefully recorded

wilting shreds of fin, black eye socket,

the curious mechanism of a hinged pout,

floating like a dream

against a bed of worm-pitted sand,

where I think you found something

you were looking for. The scales

and bony rhombus head,

intricate, mortal, still luminous.

NOTES:

Gluck was a British painter known for her unconventional style and gender-neutral name. I loved the careful detail in her work.

I learned that ‘Still life with a scallop shell and blossom’ is a Modernist take on botanical

painting. Gluck’s paints were made using natural colours and materials, and like other Modernists, Gluck preferred to paint wild or less favoured flowers, or those that symbolised ideas. I thought the myrtle might refer joyfully to her queer sensibility. Her painting of a decomposing fish head seen on Worthing beach, ‘Rage, Rage against the Dying

of the Light’, 1973, was part of an exploration of mortality. The title refers to Dylan Thomas'

poem ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,’ reflecting defiance against death.

Gluck often had her work displayed inside three frames of diminishing size, making the

paintings stand away from the wall. This reminded me of a famous camera technique used by Stephen Speilberg in ‘Jaws’… read the poem to see why.