Keith Willson on Sussex Modernism at the Towner

A Better Life for All

My Father, lad of 16.

standing in uniform in

front of a crowd in Edinburgh

during the 1926 General Strike

heard the riot act read and was told that

if the order came to fire on the strikers

you fired, relative in front of you or not.

Nine years later

with an exemplary discharge,

which letter was stolen.

in the middle of the depression.

No work, only the scorn of those

who vilified you as workshy

supporting a wife and baby on

one pound thirty-five weekly dole,

a pound of which went on rent

Without having a bike to get on,

he found odd work of sorts. Until

war paid him to make shell fuses for a time.

Socialism, the Labour party and the

Trade Unions eventually won for him

that which he couldn't achieve alone.

– a secure public sector job as a bus

mechanic, controlled rents, access to health.

So here they are, teeming towards recognition,

those who spoke up for him and he spoke up for

and those who still speak up for a better life.

And yes, this might be a fairground-painting

illustration of social realism. A farrago of

grotesques depicted with picture-postcard

booziness: turbans and tubas, wet fish and ale.

But better, naive good-natured depictions

of progress than frauds cheering them on

to the same old tunes of hate. Here are

genuine beer-swillers and fag-puffers

not multi-millionaire ex public schoolboys

who once played only the money markets

and now play the crowds

with hatred of the outsider.

Here is a caricature that shows a

certain time, a certain style, a

certain archetype, stereotype if you like.

Different paintings might show these people

as the Tolpuddle Martyrs. They

endured the Peterloo Massacre,

By Sophie Barber

the Enclosure Acts the Highland clearances.

And the clearances of today,

where private equity evicts communities

from Cornish villages for holiday rent,

and buys and milks vets, dentists

and public space alike.

And these campaigners will still be there,

no fear. Whatever they look like, in

smocks or sackcloth, denim or satin.

Flappers and Mods, in flat caps,

duffle coats, Burberry scarves,

second-hand Saville Row suits,

whatever the external appearance,

the energy is the same, whether

fuelled by jellied eels or McDonalds

pie and chips or chicken tikka masala

or socialist champagne.

And Kendrick will be free to love

Camber Sands, again.

Notes

1. I have slightly modified Stanza 2, since the reading, to take account of the death of

Norman Tebbit and reference his infamous 'he got on his bike' speech.

2. Stanza 4: I do not wish to denigrate the value of the artists' styles at all. I am trying to

emphasise that a 'warts and all' depiction reflects the true cross section of ordinary people included in this ongoing struggle.

3. Stanzas 5 and 6: Likewise I want to emphasise that the struggle has changed through the

ages, and fashion and diet are no clue to who's involved.

3: Stanza 7: This refers to a work displayed opposite the mural which I was looking at

throughout the reading, whose message is that Camber Sands should be open to all regardless of race.

A Poem on Form

The bouncy non-Euclidian

perspective of Ravilious and Angus,

disrupts curved space in chaotic

directions; perspective, but

not classical, not geometrical.

Consider the outrageously

exaggerated curves of the

railway tracks, defying the

physics of gravity, the

disturbed dynamic of the

Train Crew heaving and puffing.

Quaint engines, their spirit

naive but beyond toy.

The Long Man of Wilmington by Ravilious.

Consider the Long Man of

Wilmington where the fence

wires drag, droop, sag, decadent

and brush stroke follows the

grain of the landscape. What

do these distortions do but

emphasise the components

of the painting?

Consider Furlongs. Nancy Odufona

deconstructs the bare essence of

the vanishing point; with slits in

cardboard. But the chair that recedes

in a different direction than the floor,

makes both clamour for attention,

disrupts the flow of space

with visual enjambment.

Like his partner Garwood, confined

to bed with cancer, who made art

from toys Ravilious painted with

love and fun and sometimes an ironic

anguish, when the curvaceous

wartime planes and boats, and

sailors with sharp and good-natured

faces belied the horrors they faced.

In the penumbra of cubism,

the anti-vortex centrifugal force

spun many into Sussex exile.

Ravilious came with a love

for landscape and humanity alike.

Notes

1. Stanzas 1,2: Both Ravilious and Angus painted scenes of cement works. Angus'

Asham Cement Works is an extreme example of the distortions I describe; Ravilious Cement Works No 2 echoes the theme.

2. Stanza 3: Refers to The Long Man of Wilmington by Ravilious.

3. Stanza 4: Refers to Interior of Furlongs by Ravilious. Nancy Odufina's work of slits in cardboard, defining the three axes of perspective, echoes the angles of the doorway and walls in Ravilious' work. Enjambment is the technique in poetry of breaking the line in the middle of a phrase.

4. Stanza 5: An exhibition of Tirzah Garwood's (1908-1951) work was recently held at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Garwood's later work involved toys and cut-out collages. As a war artist, Ravilious painted many scenes involving ships and planes. A book of his war paintings has been published.

Do Beautiful Things, Artists, in this Time of the Dictators

We Must Tend Our Gardens - Voltaire.

Christine Binnie's "Disobedience"

rips tranquillity

apart on a tile shard

deliberately shattered

foreshadowing a contemporary Kristallnacht

a wake-up call for those who

prefer syllogisms to slogans

or so it seems

in this time of the dictators.

Artistic iconoclasts and parodists,

artistic disruptors and shatterers

with your clever cryptic messages:

Do beautiful things, Artists!

in this time of the dictators.

In that other time of the dictators,

Duncan Grant's pacifist parody revealed

the uncomfortable child mimic,

dressed as a Roman soldier

who stands alone and flabby

defending only his own bewilderment,

which is the true bewilderment of

those that went over the top.

Grant recoiled at one war,

but could not stop another.

Do beautiful things, Artist!

(In this time of the dictators)

A desperate politician loves a magic machine

and the magic machine is hatred

and the magic machine is ugliness

in the cutting severity of blood-rouged cheeks

and flesh-devouring mouths

the twin faces of capitalism and cannibalism

slits and bulbs of eyes equally cruel

can always invoke the playground bully

in each of us and sniff out and destroy thought,

sniff out and destroy fairness,

sniff out and destroy enlightenment.

Do beautiful things, Artist!

True ugliness cannot be parodied

and the secret police may find

Mary Elizabeth Stormont, still lives of Roses and Canterbury Bells.

nothing to censor in a still life

of roses and Canterbury Bells

or the gentle complexities of women

at domestic accomplishments,

(although they may herd you

to the rallies, in this time of the dictators).

Do Beautiful Things Artist!

Once they have started to burn the books

they are beyond parody

They will burn books they haven't read

if they read at all.

Once they are rounding up the immigrants

no clever allusion can stop them

When dictators' ugly intents

are still laughable

rebellion may lie in

parody, disruption.

But when ugliness

has total power

to rebel is to do

beautiful things,

in this time of the dictators.

Notes

1 Given the parallels between the current rise of the far right and the rise fascism during the

time of much of Sussex Modernism, I wanted to invoke the spirit of WH Auden, who was

writing at that time, in such poems as 1st September 1939, Musée des Beaux arts and

Epoitaph on a Tyrant. Voltaire, with his pragmatic statement that we must tend our gardens,

reminds us that we have personal responsibilities to tend to, that can be aesthetic, whatever is happening in the wider world.

2 Stanza 1: Christine Binnie's A Few Flying Carpet Souvenirs uses shattered tile fragments. I

was particularly drawn to the depiction of an idyllic country cottage, with the painted word

Disobedience. It struck me that this kind of implied rebellion against a status quo, which uses may appeal to those who see the message but will fail to communicate to those who are oblivious to subtlety, i.e. the rational thinking of the syllogism cannot fight the pull of the

political slogan. This raised the question of if and how the artist can combat the far right, or at least what they should do in the face of it.

3 Stanza 4: 'A desperate politician loves a magic machine'. The original thought behind this

was of current politicians desperately grasping at the Pandora's box of AI while backtracking

on the green economy. I didn't develop this, leaving only the bald statement, making a

machine of the abstract concept of hate.

4 Stanza 5: Some artists included in the exhibition, such as Mary Elizabeth Stormont, painted

traditional subjects such as 'The gentle complexity' of women at domestic accomplishments was motivated by the idea that simply to depict something honestly is to fight its trivialisation.

The Fear of Tree Memories

In this time of exploration of the

dark magical corner of the mind

trees call us, bathing us in the

subversive peace of immobility,

in a game of hide and seek.

Hide and Seek painting by Pavel Tchelitchew

Is the hidden girl becoming the

tree she is spreadeagled against,

crucified for the sake of the seeker

who does not bother to ask the

white butterfly, who knows her

hiding place, and much more? The

seeker looks for the redemption of a

human god, but the butterfly knows

better, is nearer to the way between;

the way beyond. Genetic memories

make us fear permanent stillness as

entrapment: merging into leaves;

merging into tree roots; merging

with twilight; merging into our

common past. All life, all creatures.

Notes:

1. Stanza 1, line 5 and Stanza 2 refer to Hide and Seek painting by Pavel Tchelitchew, showing a girl hiding by spreading her limbs behind the limbs of a tree with a seeker on the other side. A white butterfly is flying in a position to see both. I saw the girl's pose as resembling a crucifixion, particularly prompted by

In my interpretation, the seeker is seeking redemption.

2. Stanza 4 was prompted by Carlyle Brown's painting View from the Park at West Dean Here the landscape is seen from ground level with a pair of human heads perhaps fighting to emerge from, or sinking into the ground in an eerie blue-green twilight. The humans and the trees have similar colouring and fingers mimic branches; they are becoming one.