Church Times - Art review: Big Women at Firstsite, Colchester

My latest review for Church Times is of Big Women at Firstsite, Colchester:

'“BIG WOMEN” comes with an emphasis on the word “Big”. This is a big group show of 24 leading British women artists, each of whom is a big character in her own right. The focus is on the experience of women in later life, the show having grown out of one organised by the curator, Sarah Lucas, in 2020, which derived from discussion of the experience of becoming a Señora rather than a Señorita ...

In “times dominated by male aggression, politicking, greed, war and pig-headedness”, Lucas suggests that we need the mix of seriousness and humour, thoughtfulness and light-heartedness, brashness and sensitivity, and spirituality and humanism which characterises this exhibition.'

For more on Big Women, see my Artlyst diary for February - click here. 

Other of my pieces for Church Times can be found here. My writing for ArtWay can be found here. My pieces for Artlyst are here and those for Art+Christianity are here. See also Modern religious art: airbrushed from art history?.

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Aretha Franklin - Respect.

Simon Evans Goes to Market

How do you make economics funny? How do you put the comedy in commodity? That is the challenge that comedian Simon Evans has set himself with Simon Evans Goes to Market. The first series was interesting, thought-provoking and informative, as well as being funny. 'The market in radio comedy being what it is - [he] was rewarded with a second series.'

'In this new series for BBC Radio 4, he looks at the markets of four goods that might perhaps be referred to as 'Bads' - coffee, alcohol, tobacco and sugar. Addictive, stress inducing, even deadly - but a big part of our daily life that we just can't do without.

With the help of a variety of experts and regular co-host, presenter of More or Less, Tim Harford, he shows how economics really is part of our everyday life.'

Miranda Sawyer notes that Evans' humour 'doesn't quite fit the comedy norm' as he's 'not particularly leftwing, he has no time for cool posturing and he likes to know about stuff.' He laces 'proceedings with his clever jokes, some scripted, some off the cuff', and 'illuminates a subject as he riffs about it, takes it seriously and gets the laughs.'

Thanks to Paul Trathen for a good night out.

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Florence + The Machine - Ship To Wreck.

The Hobbit: An Unnecessary Inflation

In The Lord of the Rings films, there is a fine balance struck between the seriousness (within the context of the fictional world created) of the unfolding narrative and the particular responses and stories (often incorporating humour) of the main characters. The main focus is on a state-of-the-universe narrative but the potential portentousness of this big story is leavened and humanised by the humour and humility of the central characters and the parts they play within this meta-narrative.  

The Hobbit was originally written by J.R.R. Tolkien as a children's story complete in it's own right and it only later became a prelude to The Lord of the Rings. Having reached The Hobbit by the opposite route seems to have meant that Peter Jackson is unable to tell the earlier story in its own right and for what it is in and of itself. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first of a three part series which can only tell this the slighter of Tolkien's originally published tales of Middle Earth at this length because of the decision to also tell the story as an explicit prelude to The Lord of the Rings.

This has two implications. First, that The Hobbit films will only make sense to those who already know The Lord of the Rings films as the additional material doesn't progress the story which is actually told in The Hobbit but does fit that story into the bigger story of The Lord of the Rings. Second, the balance between seriousness and humour/humanity found in The Lord of the Rings films is lost here because of the decision to tell both the story of The Hobbit and the story of The Hobbit as a prelude to The Lord of the Rings. The story told in The Hobbit is a lighter, slighter tale which is well told in this film with humour (except when Radagast's distraction of a hunting party of Orcs is turned into the equivalent of a Benny Hill-style sketch) but this is then set against the seriousness of the storyline which explains how the events of The Hobbit fit into the state-of-this-universe narrative that is The Lord of the Rings. Instead of the leavening of seriousness with humour and humanity that is found in The Lord of the Rings films here we get a jarring shuttling back and forth between these two separated styles and stories.

This results, I think, from a lack of trust on the part of the makers in the ability of the story of The Hobbit to communicate in its own right and its own form. Jackson, essentially, does not trust that the seriousness of the tale and its links to The Lord of the Rings would emerge simply by dramatising the tale as told by Tolkien. In the story, as told by Tolkien, these aspects emerges from the lighter, humourous form of the story. It is the reverse of what is achieved in The Lord of the Rings films and it is ironic that Jackson having found for himself a balance between seriousness and humour for The Lord of the Rings films (as this balance is not in the book as written by Tolkien) has then been unable to trust the reverse balance which is naturally found in the original tale as told by Tolkien.

There is much to enjoy in the film and I'll be there with the many who will see all three over the next 18 months and then will watch all three all over again on DVD but, on a first viewing at least, my view is that the story would have been better told by reflecting and respecting the lighter, slighter nature of its form instead of this attempt to inflate it with the expansiveness and seriousness of The Lord of the Rings.

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Howard Shore - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Walker Percy: A Documentary Film

In a rare television interview in 1980, Walker Percy said his concerns as writer were with “a theory of man, man as more than organism, more than consumer – man the wayfarer, man the pilgrim, man in transit, on a journey.” Walker Percy: A Documentary Film, looks at Percy’s own journey, and is framed as a narrative about his life and ideas.
As a doctor turned writer and philosopher, Percy was concerned with the big issues: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" But he knew his audience was inured to a direct approach. Binx Bolling, in The Moviegoer, is almost allergic to such discussions –“... if they spoke to me of God, I would jump into the bayou” – yet he is preoccupied with what he calls ‘the search.’ It is a preoccupation that haunts all of Percy’s work.

Part of what makes Percy’s characters like Binx, Will Barrett, and Thomas More so indelible is their wry humor despite being ‘Lost in the Cosmos.’ In Percy’s fifth novel, The Second Coming, the protagonist, Will Barrett, descends into a cave, determined to confront God. He is thwarted by a toothache. For Walker, “humour was an instrument of introspection,” writer Robert Coles says in the film. “That’s what he beautifully combined: that lighthearted sensibility merged with a grave, seriously introspective side. This takes a genius.”

Walker Percy: A Documentary Film tells the story with archival film, excerpts from Percy’s work, and interviews with family, friends and scholars.

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Woven Hand - Dirty Blue.

Leonard Cohen: self-deprecating and humorous

One of the things I love most about the work of Leonard Cohen is his self-deprecating humour. Lines, which sound like personal credos although sung by the characters he creates, like, "I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that Time cannot decay/I'm junk, but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet" from 'Democracy', every line in 'Tower of Song' where Hank Williams coughs a hundred floors above him, or this, from 'Going Home':

"I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit ...

He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he’s really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tune."

There is real self awareness and humility here combined with the distance and irony of setting these lines ostensibly about himself in the third person. Victoria Segal notes Cohen's self-deprecation in an excellent review for Mojo of Cohen's new album Old Ideas.

Also included in Mojo's Cohen feature is a personal piece by Will Oldman describing Cohen's influence on his inspiration and work. In this piece he writes about being introduced to Cohen's music via The Best Of ... and Death Of A Ladies Man, the controversial 1977 Phil Spector-produced album. Oldham writes that he feels privileged to have been introduced to Cohen through the latter album "because to love something through its flaws provides a richer love."

Death Of A Ladies Man breaks the mould of the Cohen stereotype as sombre, introspective folk-poet by taking the vibe of Dylan's 'Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35' and giving free rein to the carnal, humorous aspects of Cohen's work. If you haven't heard it or have filed it away on a shelf somewhere, then get it out and allow your expectations of Cohen's sound to be shattered.

Oldman perceptively writes that there is something about Cohen's lyrics "that pullls you in without revealing itself entirely but it holds you there on each listen":

"It's a combination of of humour, modesty, nihilism, despair, joy and appreciation done by someone who has the ability to put language first as a poet.

Somehow he has the ability to shine a light on our finer qualities as people in a way that you feel that you have an ally: even if you're looking at the beautiful and the ugly in the world, you can value it. I can look around at the good and the bad and say, Well, this is humanity and I'm going to keep on dealing with it because I have this man who is doing that too."

For more perceptive words on Cohen listen to Malcolm Guite's On The Edge talk by clicking here.

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Leonard Cohen - Iodine.