Favourite Art - L'Umana Fragilita by Salvator Rosa

'Conceptio Culpa, Nasci Pena, Labor Vita, Necesse Mori'

I first saw this piece when I was about 20 years old, and I remember I admired its obvious dark qualities but very little else. I think it was for a creative writing project, and it may have been seen on a glossy page in some text book or catalogue. I barely even bothered to decipher its symbols or translate the Latin inscription – but it obviously touched me in some deep way because when I saw it again years later in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge I was reminded and drawn back in.

At the time of my second viewing I had grown older, had children, had lost my Father and was increasingly identifying with Eliot’s “Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock” and Philip Larkin’s “Toads” as contemplations of ageing and the wasting of one’s precious and too brief time alive on working for, or pleasing, others. So on the second occasion I sat in front of the painting for several pensive and ponderous minutes and just…thought.

The painting, which I have returned to on several occasions subsequently, between meetings, after appointments, before seminars, is so obviously a product of personal tragedy for the artist Rosa who lost many of his family to plague the year before it was completed in 1656 - but it reflects most poignantly of all the fact that he lost his son, Rosalvo. It is the imagination of the moment of this loss that is captured in the scene, and yet, at the same time, it is as if all grief and futility is encapsulated within it.

The title means “Human Frailty” and the painting shows the mocking, leering angel of death sealing a contract for the life and soul of young Rosalvo who is portrayed as too young even to form letters on a page with a pen. You can almost trace a demonic Christian cross of light from the angel’s wings through the child’s arms. He sits, oblivious, on the lap of his mother, and on the page is written in Latin “Conception is Sin, Birth is Pain, Life is Toil, Death a Necessity” giving the most lucid understanding of Salvator Rosa’s state of mind. I read that he wrote to a close friend in a letter “This time Heaven has struck me in such a way that all human remedies are useless and the least pain I feel is when I tell you that I weep as I write”.

The moment your children are born you live with the almost constant terror of losing them. In the same way that their birth completes your life's purpose, their premature death must surely destroy it. I am certain that the grieving Salvator shed many tears onto this canvas and I still find it awe-inspiring that he found the courage to create it.

Objectively, the main reason I really love this painting is that it combines that raw, visceral emotion with perfect artistic precision in structure and imagery. There are several symbols of death scattered around the scene – a knife, a death mask, a bursting bubble, the Roman God of death Terminus. The light is used to great effect. The faces of the characters are haunting and memorable. Every detail rewards study and contains profound references and explanations. Most of the allusions I got from subsequent study, but the image is so strong it really does not require much interpretation. It is quite simply what art should be – a means of communicating something tangible, or intangible, about what it means to be human - a glimpse of the numinous that transcends faith or belief.

Whenever I take life a bit too seriously, I often think of that cold bony hand gripping the young child’s wrist. Death too early was an ironic fact of life in 1656 of course, the artist himself died at just 57, and most life was nasty, brutish and short - but I manage to believe that the message of gloom contained within this work can be turned into a hopeful optimism, even if just by my vowing to make a little bit more of every extra day I am granted and finding precious moments of human interactivity that prove the inscription, albeit occasionally and too briefly, to be over stated.

A short story I tell my youngest daughter.

Amazing!

Once there was a little girl called Charlotte who was very clever, very curious and very brave.

Her teacher, Miss Burgess was a colourful, smiley young girl who wore striped tights and loved telling stories. She had a big shelf behind her desk with all her clever teaching books on it with titles like “How to think in shapes and numbers” and “Count the stars”.

One afternoon Miss Burgess handed the children their Maths books to take home for the weekend.

“Now remember children, you mustn’t work any further than the page I told you” she said “Or your brains will be full!”

After the class had gone Charlotte went over to the shelf of books and looked at the ones on the top which were covered in dust and very thick. They had gold lines down their spines and old fashioned embossed letters. Checking that nobody was looking, she climbed onto Miss Burgess’ desk and took down the first book.

It was titled “Very Clever Maths” and was full of pictures of revolving spheres and levers and graphs and shapes and other things that made Charlotte’s eyes widen.

She slipped the book into her bag and ran to catch up with the other children.

That night, with a torch under her bed clothes, Charlotte read the whole book and then did all the test questions at the end so that the next morning she could show her answers to Miss Burgess.

At first her teacher was very cross that Charlotte had taken the book but when she read the test she said:

“Amazing!” and ran off to show the Head Teacher.

“Amazing!” said the Head Teacher and ran off to show the Governors.

“Amazing!” said the Chairman of the Governors and took it to show the Mayor…

When the Mayor saw Charlotte’s hard work in the Maths test he decided he had to show the Prime Minister.

“Amazing!” said the Prime Minister and set off at once for the United Nations where he read out the results of Charlotte’s Maths test to all the nations of the world, and they all nodded to each other smiling and clapping gently. All agreed that it really was amazing.

That night as Charlotte was doing her homework there came a knock at the door. When she opened it there were five scientists dressed in white lab coats, each with spectacles and a clipboard and all scribbling away attentively.





“We are from NASA the space people!” said the tallest one with the bright yellow tie “come with us!”

So Charlotte followed them to their shiny rocket ship, which was parked in her back garden and they flew her off to NASA’s base in the United States of America.

The scientists took Charlotte into a big room where there was one desk in the middle and lots of others in a big circle around it where even more scientists sat, all with glasses and clipboards and bright coloured ties.

“Please” said the man with the yellow tie “Can you try and help us? We want to land a space ship on Mars but the Maths equations are just so difficult!”

Charlotte looked at the piece of paper he handed her and scratched her chin “hmmm…” she said and then sat down at the desk in the middle.

“It’s quite easy...look” she said and explained the equations to the scientists whose eyes were getting wider and wider. Then suddenly they all began shouting “Of course!” and “Eureka!” and “That’s it!” and ran back to their own desks in feverish excitement.

This continued for some time. Then, at last, the scientist with the bright yellow tie stood on a chair and shouted “We’ve done it!” and all the other scientists stood up and applauded Charlotte who did her best curtsey, in recognition of their kindness.

“How can we ever thank you?” said the scientist with the yellow tie.

“Well, you could give me a ride home” said Charlotte.

And they did.

It was several months later when Charlotte and her classmates were all gathered around the screen in her classroom watching the first ever humans landing on Mars. The astronauts bounced and wobbled about in their big space suits and planted a flag, and lots of famous people on Earth gave speeches and clapped.

The day came for the ship to come home. The last astronaut was just about to board the shuttle when he stopped and began scratching something in the dry, red dust on the planet’s surface. Nobody knew what he was doing.

He climbed in and slowly the great space shuttle lifted off to rejoin the Mother ship and return the astronauts safely home. As they began to lift off, the astronauts switched on a camera on the bottom of the shuttle. It was looking back down at the surface of Mars, so everyone could see.

And there, written in the dust, were the words

“Thank you Charlotte!”

“Amazing!” thought Charlotte (…and continued working on her idea for a ship to fly to the stars!)

X Factor & The Beatles is like Peaches & Diesel...

X Factor – Oh no…

If you drew a giant smiley on The Haywain by Constable you could not have insulted our cultural heritage more profoundly than the X Factor mob did by covering Beatles songs this week. The whole thing was reminiscent of those horrible seaside specials in the 70s when camp dancers gyrated around a Blackpool pier lip-synching to crap pop songs. It was absolutely appalling.

What is it with Cheryl? Do some men actually fancy her? If so, it must be domestic abusers looking for a guilt free punch-fest. When she does that pathetic hurt look I am usually being pulled off the TV, blood streaming from my knuckles. I loved when she was attacking Wagner for revealing her council house origins – like she keeps those well hidden!

So what of the show itself and the performances? Well the highlight for me was when I thought West Life had all died in a car crash but it turned out that was just an advert for their new album shown during a break. Ah well…

Five soppy boys singing “All You Need Is Love” was my start point without a harmony in sight. They pout, bob, sway and sing badly destroying an anthem like the puppets in Team America destroying world heritage sites. Disgraceful…oh and Stretch Armstrong came on Sunday and said he wanted them to win!

Rebecca Ferguson, who is undoubtedly talented, is being slowly caricatured into a cross between Sade and Macy Gray and her version of Yesterday was obviously really terrible but only one judge was brave enough to say so. It was awful – a travesty and a shame because I think she can be a good recording artiste in time if she can escape Cowell’s clutches.

Then there was Katie Weasel or whatever her name is whose only claim to fame with me is she takes my mind off punching Cheryl Cole when she appears. Her warbling “Help” was like an advert for genocide and when Simon called it “genius lyrically” well I nearly choked on my cup cake…she didn't write the lyrics you pothead she sang them! Badly. I really hope he dies in a Hotel fire, as Morrissey would say.

Then Mary did Shirley Bassey doing Something, a truly amazing song by George and one of my favourites, which was interesting – a bit “Stars In Their Eyes” really. Which could be said of the whole show actually.

Even Matt Cardle looked out of his depth which is a shame because again I think he could be a good performer given free expression and time. Come Together is a great song but only when sung by John Lennon. Which leads me to…

Point of order – Imagine is a John Lennon song recorded post-Beatles so it can’t be on Beatles night. (And who the hell chose “Hippy Hippy Shake”? The judges do nothing for their credibility with these errors.) I was actually less frightened in The Exorcist than I was at the thought that she was about to start rapping the Imagine lyrics...if she had I would have got in my car, driven to London and beaten the Great Satan Cowell to death with a rusty spanner, I swear I would have.

The mini-me Cole blubbed her way through Sunday when she needn’t have worried, not being black she was always going through. Cowell tried getting rid of Paije a week before putting him on first to play on poor viewer memories, but they gave the thumbs down to that twitchy bloke with the quiff. Hah!

All that and Wagner the protest vote believing his own bullshit and Louis thinking he has a fan base!! So funny – when he got through on Sunday I recorded Cheryl’s expression and replayed it a hundred times whilst punching the screen. Excellent therapy.

Anyway the circus continues and I will be watching mindlessly like the rest of the country. Ho hum…

Praise for “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” by Robert Tressell

Few novels can really claim to have had a wholly transformative effect on the reader but in the case of this one I can totally understand the cover statement by Ricky Tomlinson that this book changed his life. It certainly informed mine, much like Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris & London" and "Road to Wigan Pier" did.

It's creator, Robert Noonan who took the nom de plume of Tressell to avoid recriminations, sadly didn’t live to see it published. In the introduction he vouches for its accuracy and claims it is all true which gives every scene added resonance.

It charts a year in the life of a group of working class painters and decorators in Edwardian England who suffer unspeakable poverty and suffering as they attempt to survive the cruel realities of post-industrial capitalism in a fictitious town of Mugsborough.

Into their midst comes a well-read activist called Owen who attempts to teach them how they are being exploited by the capitalist system – memorably demonstrating in one scene the “great money trick” using bread divided up into pieces. The men are scornful of Owen blaming their ills on immigrants, tariff reform or free trade and decrying socialism as an evil to be condemned.

I had to constantly remind myself that this novel actually pre-dates The Suffragettes, The Russian Revolution, The first Labour Government and The First World War and excuse many of its more subsequently discredited notions on that basis. That said, many of the books central criticisms of the Western Capitalist philosophy could be equally levelled today.

Tressell does not hold back in his condemnation of the Edwardian employers. Hunter is the feared foreman, referred to variously as Misery and Nimrod, who can cut the men off at any time – they are, however, entitled to an hour’s notice! The owner, Rushton, is another tyrant who happily has the men working in freezing temperatures with poor tools and only the fear of loss of income as an incentive.

Yet Tressell understands that a system where everyone chasing the same contract must seek to undercut the other bidders is inevitably doomed to fail. He almost sympathises with the men forced to drive their employees as slaves to squeeze profit from each job – many of the scenes explore this convincingly.

He highlights poverty and the lack of help and support from the authorities in a more straightforward manner than say Dickens does, but despite being true the narrative does not suffer from a lack of story-telling. It is, at times, maddening and moving in equal measure.

All ages and classes are covered and Tressell uses names for his characters that are laugh out loud funny at times. Bodger and Leavit, Sir Graball D’Encloseland the MP, Mr Sweater and Mr Grinder the employers, Slyme the immoral cad and even Dr Weakling the only voice on the council who attempts to speak against corruption and self-interest but always fails.

The book is optimistic in the end but the irony is that Owen, who is Tressell, contracts TB in the story but ultimately survives to meet with some good fortune.

Robert Tressell was not so fortunate dying young, another victim of the system he sought to change.

The original manuscript can be viewed on-line at the TUC website complete with Noonan's alterations and notes. It is very readable and a fascinating artefact of the class struggle.

Worth a look this Xmas if you need something different!

Horror & Gore!!

Watching the Psychoville Halloween Special recently reminded me of just how much I love the Horror genre. I hit seventeen at the perfect time – the VCR had arrived in the UK and some of the most creative horror movies from the 60s and 70s could be watched late at night after a trip to The Three Horseshoes in Stukeley, preferably in groups of four or five.

I grew to love Horror from that moment onwards. The genre appeals to the visceral core of what it means to be human. The fear of death in all its forms, the struggle with terrifying ordeals, the nature of self, religion, independence and even child abuse – all have been covered in Horror movies and the teenage impressionable me was lapping it all up in the late seventies. Here then is my Horror Top 10 covering all the films that I first saw on VCR and still watch today.

10. Psycho – the original “slasher” serial killer movie has to scrape onto the chart mainly because I still really enjoy watching it so much. That scene on the stairs still gets me as does the final denouement. A classic

9. The Shining – OK Jack Nicholson is a bit over the top, but the way the film deals with the twin themes of domestic abuse and isolation is still masterly. The techniques used look a bit passé but the sheer brilliance of the direction makes up for it.

8. The Ring – Japanese version of course and truly chilling from the very start. The last scene seems to break the fourth wall by crawling out of the TV twice – the second time into your own lap! Fabulous.

7. Halloween – Michael Myers cutting up baby sitters and their boyfriends…but only if they have had sex. Innocent Laurie is ultimately spared and of course he himself can’t be killed, just as immorality can’t be killed. The film is dated but still has a brio I love and is always worth another viewing.

6. Suspiria – Fantastic Italian Horror with ground breaking special effects at the time and a genuinely disturbing underlying theme of separation and exclusion.

5. Zoltan, Hound of Dracula – slightly quirky vampire movie but the dog steals the show as a monster somewhere between the Baskerville Hound and the Alien. Superbly terrifying at the time and still worth an evening’s viewing

4. The Wicker Man – so English and so ground breaking with its plot based on paganism and ignorance laced with escapist independence from the rule of law. Edward Woodward screaming “Oh My God!” still makes my blood freeze and makes you think of ethnic cleansing, executed hostages and brutal murders in the name of religions.

3. Dawn of the Dead – The prophetic fable on consumerism. Watch it now and you could just as easily be out on a Saturday at the local Debenhams or John Lewis. We are all the Zombies now and this film tried to warn us. Superb.

2. Blood on Satan’s Claw – a kitsch hammer classic made memorable for me by the full frontal nude scene where “Angel” reveals her loyalty to the Dark Side, which disturbed me greatly as a teenage youth. Wonderful.

1. The Exorcist – As America feared for the morality and sanity of its youth, William Friedkin produced the ultimate stroppy teenager to play on all those suppressed anxieties. Yet there is more to the plot than that – the voyage of Father Carras is by far the most interesting aspect of this film and the scenes where he interplays with the devil inside Regan are the most enduring and terrifying.

You can if you wish, give points for trying to the following: The Omen trilogy, Rosemary’s Baby, The Hills Have Eyes, Scanners, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last House On The Left, Nightmare On Elm Street and The Thing.

Oh for the golden age of the VCR!!

X Factor draws me in again...

OK So I watched a recording of Saturday’s X Factor last night to give it a fair chance.


I wish I hadn’t. Actually that’s not true – I do have some fascinating revelations!

The first is that Louis Walsh is basically a one sentence robot with a good eye for the bizarre. Last year the strange twins became “Jedward” and actually sustained the public’s interest for a few months even after the series ended, and he looks like he is doing it again with Wagner who resembles that Native American who always decried the war with the White Man in Lee Van Cleef films and ultimately died in a hammy way involving a brunette and a tomahawk.

Louis basically says “You look like a Pop Star. You dress like a Pop Star. You sound like a Pop Star. You are a Pop Star!” to a different person every week. The irony is he sits next to Danni Minogue who also looks like one, sounds like one (at least whilst she is only talking) and dresses like one but never actually WAS one. Go on, name your favourite Danni Minogue hit. Exactly.

Is Cher Lloyd an anagram of “Cheryl Doll” with an “l” removed? Call me old fashioned, but do street rappers come from early evening light entertainment shows now? She is bizarre to say the least and is a bit like The Monkees were to The Stones. I keep expecting a drive by shooting to splatter Simon Cowell all over the rest of the panel as Jedward try and reclaim the hood.

Cheryl of course is being criticised for her lack of connection with TreyC or whatever she is called. Well, we all know why that is don’t we? Count your blessing TreyC and for God’s sake don’t let her follow you into the toilets. Mind you she shouldn’t really have dressed like that Red Dwarf in Don’t Look Now.

Cheryl Cole has perfected that look that seems to say “Run Bambi – Man is in the forest”. All that’s missing is the satisfying gunshot and the Emperor of Exmoor saying “sorry Cher, Cheryl cannot be with you any more”. Was that too much to ask on a Halloween special?

Then there is Simon. Like Caligula’s plebeians the audience wait for his thumb on each act. He looks to the side, does a strange hand gesture, says something ambiguous and then…the coup de grace. Close up of the contestant looking like Simon just confirmed that the early diagnosis of advanced pulmonary cancer was incorrect and in fact was only a chest cold. Simon then names his horse as a Senator, enjoys fellatio with a goat under the desk and the poor across the country pay extortionate phone rates to support his Frankenstein Boy Band rather than, say, buy vegetables.

What really annoys me is that there is some talent in there but it is being restricted and exploited for the Cowell Corporation rather than nurtured and developed. Rebecca Ferguson and Matt Cardle will no doubt be forced to sing songs by some idiot like Robbie “Save My Career For Old Times Sake Boys?” Williams when they should be learning the trade of song-writing so they can genuinely survive in the real world beyond Dermot’s shoulder. Alexandra Burke and even Leona Lewis totally depend on getting good songs and without them, and their youthful looks, they will soon fade.

Highlight of Saturday night TV for me? Harry Hill’s Wagbo, the love child of Wagner and Mary Byrne…genius!

Why do we watch these programmes? Well, I think it’s because everyone is rooting for their favourite and the thing becomes competitive and therefore entertaining. I regularly hear the words “who went out on X Factor/Strictly/Big Brother?” shouted across a bar or hotel lobby in the way they would enquire about the outcome of distant battles a century ago. I guess I will just have to keep watching to see who triumphs...come on Wagner!!

Seeing another Human Being Die.

I come from a family of Police Officers for whom the sight of a recent sudden death is not an uncommon experience. I suspect that my huge respect for them, and my certainty that it is a job I could never ever do, stems from an incident in my childhood when I witnessed somebody actually die – for the only time in my life so far thankfully.

I was about eleven years old and I remember it was a spring day because the daffodils were out on the road opposite the shop where I had just been to buy some football cards – a weekly ritual for me in those days as I squandered my generous pocket money.

Served immediately after me in the shop, with some cakes and other treats I seem to recall, was a lady of the village known to me as “Miss Lappard”. My father had taught us all to always address adults in such a way no matter how familiar they were. She was not particularly familiar and I remember that on that day she was dressed in unseasonal dark colours and that apart from being clearly quite elderly she was otherwise fit and well as she passed me on the shop steps to return to her house just 60 yards away.

She was returning to her home which had been there for considerably longer than she had, standing by the busy main road which divided it from the village, a road even older than the house – one that had Roman origins and ran straight past Great Stukeley but which was, nevertheless, busy and fast.

In his essay “A Hanging” George Orwell describes the execution of a Burmese native by the British Imperial Judiciary during his military career. The most poignant moments for him are first when on hearing that his appeal has failed the condemned individual urinates in his cell where he stands, out of pure terror, and the second when as the same prisoner walks the short distance to the scaffold in bare feet he carefully steps to one side to avoid a puddle. To Orwell this trivial unconscious act underlined the brutal significance of taking the life of a perfectly functioning human being.

For me, at least looking back, I remember a similar significant moment as Miss Lappard stepped off the kerb carefully to avoid tripping over with her bag of shopping – carefully placing one foot after the other to avoid a slip or twist of an ankle. Once safely on the road she simply stepped out towards her home…

The image that stays with me to this day is that mass of dark clothes flying into the air on the impact of the car and the following silence. Even now I do not remember a car stopping or a driver rushing back to her – I just remember that heap of clothes and the realisation that a human being had just ended their life in front of me.

I stood there, motionless for a few seconds probably rapped by terror and childhood curiosity, and then ran back into the shop to find an adult. Time changes things of course, but the basic details have remained vivid I think.

I think that, at that moment, my own mortality suddenly became real and my adult self was born.