John Wyver writes: In November the distinguished art historian Lynda Nead (link to her page at Birkbeck, where she is now Emerita Professor), who is also a friend, gave the prestigious Paul Mellon Lectures at the V&A. In four original and wonderfully rich presentations titled British Blonde about aspects of the visual culture of post-war Britain, she explored the images and meanings associated with four iconic blondes: two actors, Diana Dors and Barbara Windsor; Ruth Ellis, who murdered her abusive lover and was the last woman to be hanged in Britain; and the artist Pauline Boty.
She also kindly persuaded the Paul Mellon Centre to commission academic and filmmaker Catherine Grant and me to respond to her ideas by making two short films each about her subjects, which were screened with a panel discussion on a fifth evening. Mine were made as close collaborations with colleagues Ian Cross, for Blonde Noir about Ellis, and Todd MacDonald, for the visual essay on Boty. Ian, Todd and I worked together on our two documentaries Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today, 2020, and Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain, 2021, and to some degree, on a much more modest scale, these 5-minute shorts extend our interest in working creatively with archive images and films, and in developing distinctive screen languages for this.
John Wyver writes: On the way to New Haven for a screening and panel at Yale (so, yes, look out for another Postcard from there), I spent a busy day and a half in New York. These was a time when I travelled across the Atlantic a lot, but I hadn’t been to Manhattan since 2014. Not that it seems to have changed a great deal, although I was disconcerted to discover that arriving visitors do not need to fill in immigration and customs’ forms at the airport.
Cannabis shops appear to be everywhere, as are citibikes, and there are cycle lanes on the main north-south avenues. The subway is as strange and surreal a world as ever, peopled by the homeless and the troubled, and blighted by decades of under-investment, and yet a marvel of modernity that is cheaper and more democratic (a single fare to anywhere) than the Underground.
There was, of course, a great diner just by my hotel, and my ham and eggs, large OJ, and limitless coffee was as glorious a treat as ever. And there are still many of the greatest museums and galleries in the world, a handful of which was my excuse for stopping over.
John Wyver writes: V&A South Kensington is hosting, until 22 September, Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence, a comparatively small-scale exhibition about the fascinating topic of, as the website says, ‘a unique style of mid-century architecture which fused the clean lines of European Modernism with the hot, humid conditions of West Africa.’ Developed by British architects including Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, its exemplary buildings were created for Ghana as the country was approaching independence from the British Empire, and also in India, most notably by Le Corbusier and colleagues in the city of Chandigarh.
John Wyver writes: I am lucky enough to be in New York for a couple of nights (look out for a ‘Postcard’ from the city here soon) and I spent yesterday afternoon in the peerless permanent collections galleries of the Museum of Modern Art. In the Collections 1980s-Present rooms, there is a space, presumably with a reinforced floor, devoted to the late Richard Serra’s monumental Equal, 2015, which absolutely captivated me. With the work almost to myself, I took a lot of photographs.
John Wyver writes: I had been looking forward to Peter Biskind‘s latest book, which in the States is titled Pandora’s Box: How Guts, Guile and Greed Upended TV, and which over here carries the slightly desperate, and arguably reportable to the ASA, subtitle The Greed, Lust and Lies that Broke Television. His Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex. Drugs and Rock’n’Roll Generation Saved Hollwood is a classic, chronicling the mainstream American film industry of the 1970s. Amd of course, with my Sky and Netflix subs, I have been following the tale he explores in Pandora’s Box since The Sopranos and The Wire.
John Wyver writes: as usual, a selection of articles and audio that caught my attention this past week. The image above, which relates to my first choice, is a detail from Anatole Godet’s photograph of“Portrait de Emile Zola” par Manet, 1872-74, an albumen silver print courtesy of the wonderful Getty open content programme. Happy Easter.
• Is it even good?: like Brandon Taylor, who for the LRB writes – brilliantly – about Emile Zola’s twenty Les Rougon-Macquart novels [£, limited free access], I too have been working my way through this massive cycle of late nineteenth-century naturalism. And like him, I have been reading them in the excellent new editions, translated by Brian Nelson and others, and published by Oxford World’s Classics.
To date, it’s taken me longer than his two years, and working my way through them in publication order, I have four and a half to go. And I too am stuck part way through The Dream, published in 1888, of which Brandon writes, ‘The book insists so firmly and intensely on its own feelings that the reader is totally shut out.’ Yep.
But he also proposes that, ‘You will probably never read all twenty of Les Rougon-Macquart. I know that. You know that. Let us accept this truth between us.’ Well, no, Brandon. I’ll get there. Just give me time. I know the journey will have been worth it.
John Wyver writes: Here’s another brief, random note about a cultural object that I’ve encountered in the past few days, in this case Fritz Lang’s Western with Henry Fonda and Gene Tierney, which I saw at what I persist in calling the NFT on Monday evening. The film was screened as part of the Tierney season Out of the Shadows, that is just kicking off, with a host of treats, including a second showing of The Return of Frank James on Friday evening.
John Wyver writes: I’m pleased that I seem to be managing to keep the Sunday dozen going, and while I don’t feel ready – or have the time – to return to blogging more seriously, I want to try floating another series. There are lots of things – films, books, plays, much more, that I enjoy and appreciate, and that I want to comment on or recommend. I can do that on Facebook and Bluesky, but I’m interested to see if that very modest social media activity can benefit from something just a tiny bit more substantial and less transient.
So I am going to experiment with what, for the moment at least, I call ‘jottings’ – occasional, random bite-size posts about anything and everything that appeals to me, which I have also decided for no particular reason to number. This first is combines a walking map from Modernist Estates and a resplendent Henry Moore sculpture, above.
John Wyver writes: the weekend’s selection of articles, audio and video that especially engaged me over the past week.
• The dinner party that started the Harlem Renaissance: a wonderful slice of archival research about a 1924 New York dinner party that was arguably the origin moment of the profoundly significant cultural movement; presented online by The New York Times [gift link], with a stylish introduction (detail above), this is written by Veronica Chambers, the paper’s editor of Projects and Collaborations, and curator and writer Michelle May-Curry, lecturer of engaged and public humanities at Georgetown University.
John Wyver writes: a little late this week, and I’m completing the choice on a train to Stratford-upon-Avon for a final RSC “goodbye” to Greg Doran – as usual, here are a dozen articles and audio elements that I found especially engaging this past week. Plus, although I don’t have an article linked to it, above is a room in the Royal Academy’s terrific Entangled Pasts: 1768-Now exhibition, with Hew Locke’s glorious Armada (2017-19) installed amongst a selection of grand manner history paintings plus a dazzling Kehinde Wiley portrait. Go see the show.
• Arts & Ideas – Edward Bond: I failed last week to mark the death of one of the most significant post-war British playwrights, so I am delighted now to feature this excellent Radio 3 discussion about his significance, chaired by Matthew Sweet, with writer and director Mark Ravenhill, actor Kenneth Cranham, Professor of Contemporary Theatre Jen Harvie, playwright and archivist Tony Coult, and theatre director Claudette Bryanston.
