​Intimate but large, respectful yet confrontational. The Hayward Gallery's exhibition on the early work of photographer Diane Arbus makes space for such contradictions. The curator of the exhibition, Jeff Rosenheim, describes Arbus' approach as one in which she was an active participant: 'For Arbus the experience of engaging with her subjects was what she was looking for. She was not trying to steal a picture. She wanted everyone to know what she was doing.' While many of her contemporaries exploring street photography were hidden behind the camera and 'followed the Henri Cartier-Bresson mode of photography: get in, get out quickly, don’t get hurt', as Rosenheim notes, 'Arbus wanted to get hurt. She wanted that confrontation'. She was, he says, making us question the rules of engagement.
 
That vulnerability is part of what attracts people to Arbus' work, and it is echoed in her own life. It is echoed too in the design of the exhibition, which requires viewers to decide how they want to view. There is no prescribed route, unlike in most exhibitions which lead the viewer by the hand, chronologically, thematically. Here, what order in which to view the photos, how to view them, whether to view them all – all these decisions rest with the viewer, and with them the responsibility for their experience.
 
Art historian Alexander Nemerov writes about a particular type of courage shown by Arbus, the aunt he never met but who was a feature in his life, if only as a secret in the house in which he grew up. His father and Diane's brother, the poet Howard Nemerov, stashed in a drawer a photo Diane inscribed to him; he seemed to find her work repugnant. In Silent Dialogues[1], the younger Nemerov describes his father's and aunt's different approaches to their art in a way that reflects the sensibility of the Hayward Gallery's display of Arbus' earlier work:
 
'Arbus had the courage not only to bend photography over backward but to bend her own written eloquence backward, too, all to portray what the floating balls and the shimmering pools and the crystalline fountains do not: namely, some dumbness beyond her mind. The world for my father responded only to his intelligence - the balls spin because, as he put it in another poem, "The mind's eye lit the sun." Nothing moves, nothing glows, not the wasp on the beach ball, not the fire spouting from the star, but that the poet's mind makes it. Arbus, by contrast, could see the world as it was without her. She simply gave it the chance to be as it was.'
 
In Arbus' work, Nemerov writes, the 'dumbness' or blankness is a vacancy in which 'the world discloses itself'. Facilitating this disclosure was the role Arbus saw for herself.
 
 
Diane Arbus: in the beginning, at the Hayward Gallery, 13 Feb-6 May 2019
 
 


[1] Alexander Nemerov, Silent Dialogues: Diane Arbus & Howard Nemerov, San Francisco, CA: Fraenkel Gallery, 2015

“If the people are not utterly degraded, although individually they may be worse judges than those who have special knowledge, as a body they are as good or better.” Aristotle

​If you're someone who watches select committee hearings on Parliament TV (I confess I am), you might have noticed an intriguing backdrop to proceedings in the Thatcher Room at Portcullis House. Recently, while watching an evidence session of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee (PACAC), I was struck by the relevance of the artwork – a tapestry called Democracy, by Pat Taylor – to current debates here on Brexit and the role of Parliament.

​Taylor, a weaver who was formerly Director of the Tapestry Studio at West Dean College, was commissioned in 1999 by Parliament's Advisory Commission on Works of Art to design two tapestries: Democracy I and Democracy II. Each took about 11 months to make, in the studios at West Dean. It is the first of the two tapestries that graces the Thatcher Room at Portcullis House, hanging behind the Committee chair in hearings on the relationship between citizen and state, the bread and butter of PACAC proceedings.
 
These days, in what Julian Baggini has called 'the rise of degenerative democracy', demands that the will of 'the people' must be enacted have led to our constitutional crisis over Brexit in the UK and the demagoguery of President Trump in the US. Populist parties are on the rise throughout the world, threatening the protection of minority rights and interests and norms of good governance and accountability. 

Exploring the place of people and their representatives in a parliamentary democracy., Taylor uses both text and imagery within her tapestries as social and political commentary. In Democracy I, a composite image shows both mirrored and blurred people as a metaphor for debate. The text is based on responses to letters she sent to a random selection of 300 MPs, asking them to provide a definition of democracy on an enclosed postcard and return it to her. The responses were illuminating. Many quoted Abraham Lincoln; former Labour MP Ken Livingston wrote that democracy is the right to vote for him as Mayor of London; one referred to 'endless talking'. It's a sad reflection on the quality of some of our representatives that 20 MPs said they were too busy and didn't have time to define democracy. A selection of the most frequently used words in the responses was incorporated into the bottom half of the weaving, in different sizes and colours, running like film credits of keywords of democratic engagement: 'equality', 'participation', 'suffrage', 'consent', 'accountable'.
 
Taylor says that some people, including MPs, were baffled why Aristotle's name appears in the tapestry. Some MPs may have included Aristotle in their responses, but also Taylor's intention was to reflect her understanding that Aristotle considered democracy, for all its flaws, as the best form of government, that if individuals pool their virtues they are better at governing as a whole than a few elites. A useful reminder at times like these, when little 'virtue' is on display and it is a few elites who have brought the people and our democracy to this sorry impasse. But linking Aristotle and democracy is problematic; aside from the fact that entire parts of the population were excluded from governing, and today his prescription of government by the virtuous can be read as both elitist and as fuel to populist calls for direct rule of the majority.

​For some, the referendum on the EU in 2016 was sold as an opportunity to restore Parliamentary sovereignty; its result is now being used to undermine the role of Parliament. As Julian Baggini notes, 'the constitutional obstacles that stand between the expression of the people’s will and its enacting are actually the best protection we have against the tyranny of the many over the few, or of leaders who claim to represent all while really standing only for themselves.'

'Threshold' is a bridge from light to dark, from the known to the unknown, and it holds the potential for both fascination and terror. Mae Architects describe it as 'transition space', as 'enfilade' of space, which leaves areas of doubt between spaces and their use, such as between inhabitation and 'transition'. In their book of essays, Places for Strangers (2014), they give examples, such as the quadrangles and courts of Oxford and Cambridge colleges, of enfilades offering 'space to dwell, to move, to encounter'.
 
The V&A's threshold space
 
The opening of the V&A's new Exhibition Road entrance in June 2017 changed the relationship between the museum and the spaces and places on Exhibition Road, including the National History Museum and the Science Museum. The design, by Amanda Levete Architects, also links in (almost) seamlessly with the Shared Space design of the road; a Dutch innovation, Shared Space is a counterintuitive approach to road safety that involves removing the usual barriers, signs and traffic lights that separate pedestrians from cars. Recently, V&A Director Tristram Hunt suggested that the new entrance had helped the museum attract a 26% increase in visitors and that one factor is that the new entrance is less intimidating than the grand 'castle keep' way in on Cromwell Road. “All the data we have shows that it is much more attractive to non-traditional museumgoers,” said Hunt. “It is less, frankly, scary.” (The Guardian, 18 July 2018).
 
The new entrance also created a 'transition zone' as recognition that entering the museum (any museum) can be intimidating for some visitors. On the V&A's blog, Kati Price explains:
 
'The new Sackler Courtyard offers a ‘decompression zone’ – a threshold space between the busy Exhibition Road and the Museum itself. Like plazas, parks and entrance courtyards to other museums, this threshold space allows people to enjoy the beautiful surroundings without having to commit to entering the building. These are important transitionary spaces, helping to ease people into the Museum which – for some – can be intimidating.'
 
My experience as a Welcoming Ambassador at the V&A is that people using the new courtyard are often confused as to whether or not they are in the museum – indeed some aren't even aware it is a museum. It intrigues while at the same time giving the impression of being open to all – even if they don't always know what 'it' is.
 
Yet the effect achieved may not be what was intended, and partly that's down to the unpredictability of people. Price describes the ambitions for a 'digital welcome' to the museum, using apps and other digital technologies to help visitors explore the museum and its collections and heritage. But she notes that so much changed from 2012, when that ambition was originally set out, in terms of technology but also in the understanding of people's behaviour. What she and colleagues discovered is that instead of focusing on the 'digital welcome', they needed to take a step back and consider what people wanted, realising that 'to separate out the digital from other elements of the welcome experience risks a fragmented visitor experience that doesn’t intuitively blend the digital and the physical'. They attempted to map the 'visitor experience' – the physical, as in spaces in the museum, and the emotional, the visitor's responses to what she saw. This gave them fresh insights into the way the museum was using digital technology and 'touchpoints', not always to best effect. And it emphasised that real people – the staff and volunteers 'on the shop floor' – were a necessary ingredient.
 
This stepping back also taught the V&A that digital offerings (apps, maps and information) are ever only part of the story – people still want stuff on paper, and they want the right information at the right time. Price summarises the key learning points as:

• Recognise our people as a vital part of the experience
• Make our touchpoints more visible
• Define a clear purpose for each touchpoint
• Make a more consistent experience
• Provide the right information at the right time

 
These may seem like obvious, 'Mom and apple pie' type revelations – who wouldn't argue for more consistency and recognising people as vital ingredients? – but they are in fact a reflection of how far the vision shifted from the original 'digital by default' vision set out in the V&A's Heritage Lottery Fund application. (I'm struck by the parallels with the justice system. I'm currently working with a colleague on a book project on administrative justice and human rights, and how the two can be re-imagined with the help of the world of design. There is much in what the V&A learned that is relevant for digitalisation of the justice system, which, like any major museum with historic but confusing architecture, can be daunting to first-time visitors. But one key difference is that the V&A's strategy is to get more people into the museum. The HMCTS's strategy may well be to keep people out of its system, to make the workload more manageable and to keep costs down. That at least is a widely shared sceptical view of the intentions of the current justice reform programme.)

People and their places – connectivity and threshold

Recognising the importance of threshold, of transition space, may reflect a new and different approach to user focus in design, one that is looser, indeed less designed. The role of users in design has changed over the past 100 years, and now the imperative is to engage with users, not as individual consumers but as a collective, as part of the 'civic condition', and as co-designers. Design thinker Ezio Manzini suggests that connectivity is one of the keys to employing user-centredness in design. The importance of a user-centred approach, one that focuses on communities of 'users', lies in the sense-making role of design and the place of people in that sense-making. Co-design as defined by Manzini is like a multifaceted social conversation in which different actors participate in different ways and at different times. Co-designing with users ensures that the solution (the problem being solved) also has meaning – in fact, it is 'the only way of making sure that the technical solution found will actually be culturally and socially acceptable to the people and communities it is to benefit'. This too may sound uncontroversial, but its application of often more limited in practice, a sort of paying lip service to the needs of the user (consider customer satisfaction surveys as a means of bringing users' views into design and re-design).
 
Mae Architects explore how 'unexpected engagement' is designed into a space by allowing free movement between spaces and 'loose fitting', even advocating for some degree of non-design: 'Architecture which has enough presence to step back and not do the jazz-hands thing in public can be absorbed as part of a city.' Too much coherence locks you in; 'urbanistically being too specific can create monocultures'. Manzini sees connectivity as creating flexibility; it loosens and makes more fluid, in the way that temperature can affect the fluidity of materials.
 
Seams

This plasticity and flexibility and the encounters it can promulgate reflects too the intention of Shared Spaces, as in Exhibition Road just outside the V&A's new entrance. What Hans Monderman (the Dutch engineer who invented the concept of Shared Space) observed was that these safety elements of kerbs, crossings, traffic lights and railings prevent road users from interacting with each other; when lines are blurred between street and pavement, users are forced to look, engage and negotiate with one another, eye to eye. Monderman created more than 100 shared spaces in the Netherlands, and studies he carried out showed a reduction in accidents and no fatalities in Shared Spaces (Toth 2009). Monderman's designs are not seamless – on the contrary, the 'seam' of Shared Space is the ingrained caution hardwired into all of us when using the roads. But this caution is addressed in a fluid way using the age-old technique of eyeballing a fellow human.
 
One problem with user focus in design, noted by urbanist Richard Sennett, is that the trend for 'friction-free' design does away with resistance, with obstacles, with the limbo state of uncertainty. The idea is to design out the 'seams' so that they are invisible to the user. But this also designs out all sorts of serendipitous encounters. Instead, when you 'treat edges as seams', as Mae Architects suggest, thresholds become mediating devices for social exchange.
 
About the author:
 
Margaret Doyle is a Welcoming Ambassador at the V&A and author of the blog Good at Looking (www.goodatlooking.com). She is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the UK Administrative Justice Institute, University of Essex (www.ukaji.org).
 
Sources:
 
Mark Brown, 'V&A's 'less scary' entrance drives up visitor numbers' (The Guardian, 18 July 2018)
 
Mae Architects, Places for Strangers: Ideas for places, people and the city, by Mae Architects, edited by
Shumi Bose (Park Books, 2014)
 
​Ezio Manzini, Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation (MIT Press,
2015)
 
Kati Price, 'Designing a new welcome experience at the V&A' (V&A blog, 9 March 2018),
www.vam.ac.uk/blog/digital/designing-a-new-welcome-experience-at-the-va
 
Richard Sennett, Building and Dwelling (Allen Lane, 2018)
 
Gary Toth, 'Where the sidewalk doesn't end' (Project for Public Spaces, 16 August 2009),
https://www.pps.org/article/shared-space

​
Golden Harvest was produced by Hull Traders, an innovative textile firm based in Colne in Lancashire, which specialised in artist-designed, screen-printed textiles. The Whitworth Gallery, which holds many of McNish's designs, says that Golden Harvest became their all-time best-selling design, and continued to be manufactured into the 1970s.

Sources:

Christine Checinska (2018) 'Christine Checinska in Conversation with Althea
McNish and John Weiss', TEXTILE, 16:2, 186-199
 
Whitworth Gallery, 'Trade and Empire: Remembering Slavery', 2008-2009,
http://revealinghistories.org.uk/why-was-cotton-so-important-in-north-west-england/objects/fabric-golden-harvest.html
 
McNish and Weiss, http://www.mcnishandweiss.co.uk

​“Probably no part of London can compete with South Kensington in the wide variety of interest which it offers to vastly different mentalities.”
 
                                                                                           H.V. Morton, In Search of London, 1951
 
Two years ago, one great thing about the David Bowie fever at the V&A was that it enticed people in who might not otherwise have considered visiting the museum. In spite of Morton's generous description of South Ken in 1951, the area isn't now often seen as one catering to 'different mentalities'. As Welcoming Ambassadors, my colleagues and I frequently were approached by visitors who had never been to the V&A, who had timed tickets to enter the Bowie exhibit in an hour, or in twenty minutes, and wanted to know what could they see in that time. It made for some fascinating ‘moments of shared happiness’ (as our mentor and colleague Glyn Christian calls them) and for some challenging moments as well, as we tried to identify which of the many collections in the Museum would spark the interest of a total stranger.
 
I had a couple ask me for advice on what to see for two people who had never met each other. They were young and sparky, and as I described the collections I saw their eyes light up on certain ones. (They settled on Architecture and the 20th Century Gallery.) You have to admit the Museum is an inspired choice of destination for a blind date.
 
I suspect many who don’t know the museum think of it as a stuffy Victorian institution, with objects encased in glass on dark shelves. This stuffiness is well illustrated in a passage from Thomas Crofton Croker’s A Walk from London to Fulham (1860), in which he described the collections of the V&A (then the newly opened South Kensington Museum) in a way that makes a visit seem more worthy than enjoyable:
 
“There are specimens here of ornamental art, an architectural, trade, and economical museum; a court of modern sculpture, and the gallery of British Art… the whole designed with the view of aiding general education, and of diffusing among all classes those principles of science and art which are calculated to advance the individual interests of the country, and to elevate the character of the people…”
 
Yet even back then there was something steamy about the locale. Around the time the Brompton Boilers were built (a nickname for the temporary buildings, used disparagingly by the leading architectural journal of the day, The Builder), Croker described the Brompton area as the locale for illicit activities:
 
“Brompton was formerly an airy outlet to which the citizen, with his spouse, were wont to resort for an afternoon of rustic enjoyment. It had also the reputation of being a locality favourable to intrigue.”
 
The possibilities for intrigue continue today. Of course, everyone’s taste is different, but one of my favourite pieces to inspire misbehavior is in the Sculpture galleries, in room 21: an Art Deco fireplace with a bronze relief by Charles Sargeant Jagger (1885-1934). The fireplace is considered one of the most important features in Mulberry House, in Smith Square, Westminster, designed by Edwin Lutyens. The house's renovation in 1930 was, according to the V&A's description, considered to be 'one of the finest achievements of a fruitful collaboration between interesting and enlightened patrons, an innovative architect and a painter and sculptor.'
 
The relief shows a naked couple part-embracing, part-fleeing a crowd of society ladies looking on in fascinated outrage. It was commissioned by Lord and Lady Melchett (Henry and Gwen Mond) as a reference to the untraditional relationship they enjoyed with the writer Gilbert Cannan.

​Reviewing the renovated interiors in Country Life in 1931, Professor C.H. Reilly wrote:
 
'The bronze itself is a very delicate piece of modelling, and seems – if one must find a meaning for it – to represent “Scandal”. The central pair of nude figures – the lovers – while they make an interesting wall pattern, are a very expressive piece of modern sculpture, the angularity of which seems to heighten the emotion. The other figures in the background, making a rich texture with their clothes, are, one supposes, discussing and criticising the lovers – a very proper satire on the ordinary uses of the drawing room.'
 
The story behind this work is one of sexual openness and intrigue and is perhaps more steamy than the sculpture itself. Gwen Wilson, an artist from South Africa who had come to London to study at the Slade, and writer Gilbert Cannan were lovers who lived together in a studio in St John’s Wood. Gilbert had recently divorced from Mary Barrie, having been a co-respondent in the much-publicised divorce between Mary Barrie (a former actress) and J.M. Barrie (author of Peter Pan) in which mary claimed the marriage had not been consummated. Mary and gilbert's marriage itself didn't last long, apparently due to Gilbert's affair with the then 19-year-old Gwen.
 
The story goes that Henry Mond, wealthy heir to a finance business, had a motorbike accident outside the St John's Wood studio in 1918, and Gwen found him injured and helped nurse him to recovery. Mond moved in with Gwen and Gilbert and became their lodger, and eventually, lover (of Gwen) in an open ménage a trois. Two years later, while Gilbert was away on a lecture tour, promoting the work of his friend D.H. Lawrence, Henry and Gwen married. Gilbert, Henry and Gwen continued to live together after Gilbert's return. However, as curator Eric Turner reports, the Mond marriage precipitated Gilbert’s 'final, catastrophic and irreversible mental breakdown', and he was admitted to The Priory hospital in south London, where he remained from 1924 until his death in 1955.

The Monds became a part of the social and political establishment, with a social circle that included a number of artists and, according to the V&A, 'skirted the fringes of the Bloomsbury circle, all of whom were in temperament or sexual mores, outsiders within the establishment'. The Monds' ambiguous relationship with society may have reflected the fact that Henry's family was Jewish and they were keenly 'aware of an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in English attitudes' and may have experienced some discrimination. Their unconventional living arrangements no doubt contributed to a sense of being outside society, although the fireplace they commissioned Jagger to design is more a celebration of the outrage they inspired. It was commissioned several years after Gilbert's breakdown and move to the Priory and pictures Gwen and Gilbert as the fleeing nudes.
 
Intrigue doesn't always turn out well. But no doubt it was all good fodder for the gossip columns of the time.
 
For more details and images of the Mulberry House Art Deco interior, see Eric Turner, 'Art Intimates Life: The Mond "Ménage à Trois"', Apollo Magazine, Sept 2009, http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/art-intimates-life-mond-menage-trois.html
 

​The year of 2017 will be bookended by women speaking out about sexual harassment. And these bookends are both captured visually in two designs created by women: the pink pussyhat and the #metoo hashtag. Both were created as visual symbols of, and means of communicating, women's anger and outrage. They've been hugely influential, spearheading vital and timely campaigns. Yet their adoption has contributed to a wildfire spread in which the original aims and intentions risk being lost. Can these design icons serve as a focal point to help people discuss sexual harassment and improve the level of debate? Or do they serve as visual symbols of the co-option of anger for media and marketing purposes? We need to talk about this, and we need to talk about talking better.

 

​The Women's March, January 2017
 
At the Women’s March in January, held throughout the world to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump as US President and misogynist-in-chief, more than 4 million people in 600 cities donned knitted pink hats to show solidarity. The hats are part of the Pussyhat Project, an initiative founded by screenwriter Krista Suh and architect and activist Jayna Zweiman after the 2016 Presidential election. Suh and Zweiman worked with a knitting-shop owner, Kat Coyle, to design the pussyhat, its cat ears inspired by a recording released during the election campaign in which Trump is heard joking with Billy Bush about grabbing women ‘by the pussy’, a form of sexual assault which he discounted as ‘locker room banter’ in his defence.
 
The intention of the Pussyhat Project was to create a striking, collective visual expression of women’s anger. One of the project’s primary aims is to develop meaningful, respectful connections among people who care about women’s rights. The movement also aimed to provide a way for people who couldn’t physically attend a march to join the protest by knitting a hat for a marcher.
 
This origin story echoes the many ways craft and revolution have intersected for hundreds of years  - think Sarah Corbett and her Craftivist Collective, spearheading campaigns to highlight issues of social justice through ‘mindful activism’, ‘reflection and respectful conversation’. Below is one of her projects, quoting Nehru and placed outside Clapham Junction Station in London as a comment on the way women’s voices are often unheard. Corbett explains, ‘Often the boys would have their arms around their girlfriends and the girls would not talk much. It made me uncomfortable and I wanted to challenge it.’ 

​Like knitting, embroidery is a craft medium (primarily but not exclusively practised by women) that lends itself to rebellion; this blog has in the past quoted Rozsika Parker who, in her book The Subversive Stitch, notes that 'the art of embroidery has been the means of educating women into the feminine ideal and of proving that they have attained it, but it has also provided a weapon of resistance to the constraints of femininity.’ Embroidery can be the unlikely midwife to rebellion; as artist Hannah Hock wrote in her 1918 work On Embroidery, it is an expression of women's assertion as rights-holders: 'But you, craftswomen, modern women, who feel that your spirit is in your work, who are determined to lay claim to your rights (economic and moral), who believe that your feet are firmly planted in reality, at least y-o-u should know that your embroidery work is a documentation of your own era!' And although the Pussyhat movement spread thanks to Instagram, Facebook and other social media, its founders argue that it is committed to real-life engagement and conversations, arguing that ‘in the process of making pussyhats, participants would be connecting with each other and laying the groundwork for future political activism.’

​The Weinstein scandal,
​October 2017
 
One of the dangers, however, is that a design icon for a social movement can quickly become adopted as a marketing brand and lose meaning and power – or at least its power can be co-opted by forces that distort the original aims. The pussyhat was named Brand of the Year by SVA in one of many competitions established 'in an effort to understand, measure, mark, and codify the meteoric'. It was honoured not for its contribution to capitalism but in recognition of its democratising purpose: 'created by the people, for the people—and it brings people together for the benefit of humanity'. Yet this award calls into question whether the design icon has lost its origin story in its adoption as a marketing brand. What does it now mean?
 
This question is as true for the pussyhat as it is for the #metoo Twitter hashtag, which recently has been at the forefront of a sexual abuse scandal primarily focused on the upper echelons of US and UK public life. The scandal has been a gift to the media. There is no better illustration of this co-option than the full-page spread published by the New York Times this month, with a 'shame' list of 40 prominent men who had resigned or been sacked as a result of sexual abuse allegations.
 
Pussyhat co-founder Zweiman has linked the Pussyhat movement with the #metoo Twitter hashtag, which was created in 2006 by social activist and community organiser Tarana Burke as part of a grassroots campaign to promote 'empowerment through empathy' among women of colour who have experienced sexual abuse. Burke reports that she was inspired to use the phrase after being unable to respond to a 13-year-old girl who confided to her that she had been sexually assaulted. Burke later wished she had simply told the girl, 'me too'. In light of the allegations about sexual abuse by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, in October 2017, actor Alyssa Milano revived the use of #metoo as a way to give voice to all women who had experienced sexual harassment and abuse and to illustrate the magnitude of the problem. It was quickly adopted, and has trended in more than 85 countries; arguably it has sparked what has become, in late 2017, a storm of sexual harassment and assault allegations against men in power, primarily in the media and political spheres.
 
Although Milano acknowledged Burke as the designer of #metoo, the original focus on the experiences of black women has been lost in the ensuing maelstrom. Furthermore, the celebrity stardust that accompanies the current storm runs the risk of ignoring the everyday experiences of sexual harassment and abuse that all women, from all spheres of life, face in a system that is still fundamentally patriarchal and sexist. Burke herself has said that she would like us to move away from a focus on the alleged abusers and the 'celebrity scandal' and focus on survivors and on the systemic issues that allow sexual violence to flourish.
 
Feminism has not always grappled successfully with intersectionality. In Bad Feminist, Roxanne Gay writes about feminism, with all its flaws, helping her to find her voice. But she also notes that feminism has failed to embrace women of colour, transgender women, and poor women and has failed to address intersectionality, the multitude of factors in our identities (race, gender, sexuality, disability) which are not isolated but are interwoven and shape our experiences, including experiences of harassment and abuse. When a movement or protest focuses on only one aspect (eg gender) it can misrepresent how oppression of discrimination (eg sexism) is experienced by individuals. This is but one example of the ways in which the current debate about sexual harassment and abuse has betrayed the intentions of the #metoo designer.

We need to talk….
 
Michigan State University’s Museum has collected pink pussyhats as part of their protest materials archive and intends to use the hats as part of ‘Difficult Dialogue’ talking circles. The Museum’s Director says, ‘The conversations won’t be easy, we realise, but at a time when our nation is so polarised over so many seemingly intractable issues, we need to learn, all over again, how to listen to one another.’
 
We need more 'Difficult Dialogues' right now. I fear we're not listening to each other, and I wonder to what extent the design icons that have made the pussyhat and #metoo movements so prominent have contributed to that. Social media invites branding, trending and quick response; it doesn't lend itself to careful consideration of the issues. It doesn't tolerate uncomfortable viewpoints and opinions. And it is no place for those who just feel confused. Writing about the often kneejerk reactions to sexual harassment allegations in higher education, Alison Phipps suggests that punitive, 'zero tolerance' responses unhelpfully conflate behaviours and obscure the roots of individual behaviour.  Although I think individual misbehaviour and harassment should be called out, I do agree with Phipps when she says, 'Dysfunctional systems can’t be fixed by purging a few individuals. This is what I call "institutional airbrushing" – the visible blemish is removed and the underlying malaise left to fester.' Culture change is what's needed, and honesty about the systemic forces at play.
 
Phipps touches on the dangers of ignoring intersectionality, which she says 'pushes us to understand our lives as complex mixtures of victimhood and perpetration'. A crude explanation of what constitutes sexual harassment or abuse, and a one-size-fits-all approach to remedying it (though only superficially, by securing trophy heads on pikes), gets us no further in our understanding or our ability as a society to remedy the problem. And it leaves many women's experiences unrecognised: 'Seeking justice on sexual harassment without acknowledging the injustices built into the fabric of institutions will protect some at the expense of others.'

Where are the men's voices in all this? Not the men who absurdly claim they don't know what's acceptable anymore in terms of touching or commenting, and not the men, like US Vice-President Pence, who insist they will not meet or dine with a woman other than their own wives (the absurd 'Pence Rule'). We don't hear much from the men who have been accused of sexual harassment or abuse. But we hear even less from men who haven't been and who may feel wary of speaking up, of saying the 'wrong' thing. We need to recognise that among the clear red lines of unacceptable behaviour there are a range of acceptable responses that women can make. There is also, dare we say it, a level of ambiguity in interpretation and nuance and context.
​
 
We need to be having better and more robust conversations. If 2016 was newly shocking in its assaults to our political sensibilities, 2017 is depressingly retrograde. It has continued to bring in disruption (of the good and bad kind) on a massive level, but the tenor of debate remains depressingly superficial. ​

I love what Glenn Adamson, formerly of the V&A and now director of New York’s Museum of Arts and Design, said about Signs and Wonders, that it has the ‘if’ factor: “If you look up it is there. If you don’t look up it is still there.” He also said that “The magic of the V&A’s vast permanent collection is that each visitor discovers it anew, through a unique and completely personal process of selection.”

One attraction for me is the way the ceramics galleries (although this holds true of many of the other galleries as well) blurs the line between art and craft – an often arbitrary and unnecessary distinction.

De Waal is one of many of Britain’s, and the world’s, most successful designers, artists and craftspeople who have used the V&A as a source of ideas and stimulation over the past 150 years: Arts and Crafts pioneers William Morris and William de Morgan (Islamic design), children’s author Beatrix Potter (textiles), Italian designer Alessi (Dresser), among others. Everyone is welcome to come here to see the work of these artists alongside the historic collections that helped to inspire them.

I hope you enjoyed this introductory talk!

“But you, craftswomen, modern women, who feel that your spirit is in your work, who are determined to 
lay claim to your rights (economic and moral), who believe that your feet are firmly planted in reality, 
at least y-o-u should know that your embroidery work is a documentation of your own era!”

Hannah Hoch, On Embroidery, 1918

There are three sets of doors in the new model – front, middle, and the open one at the back. Accessibility is far better than on the old model: there is wheelchair and buggy access and a wheelchair bay opposite the middle doors. Both audio and visual stop announcements help everyone, not just those with hearing or visual impairments.

Production of the old Routemasters stopped in 1968. The new Routemasters, which hit London's roads in 2012, were designed by Thomas Heatherwick, who also designed the beautiful copper cauldron at the 2012 London Olympics. 

The new model is larger than the old one but lighter, and to minimise the perceived size the corners and edges were rounded. The windows are ribbons of glass that curve around the sides and back of the bus, and the interior is simplified, less chaotic. The diesel-electric hybrid means it’s probably gentler on the environment. It certainly is less noisy.

The Millennium Bridge is a project that incorporates many elements of urban design, a collaboration between architect, engineer and sculptor (Arup, Engineers; Foster and Partners, Architects; Sir Anthony Caro, Sculptor). It is, as the project website says, a "minimal design that gives pedestrians unrivalled views of London, free from traffic and high above the Thames".

“A long span bridge, as needed to cross the Thames at this point, is a pure expression of engineering structure. A city centre footbridge, however, is equally about people and the environment - a piece of public architecture."

There are other aspects of urban design that we don’t often appreciate but that make it possible for us to get around and experience our surroundings and the delights of city living. The Oyster Card for one – it makes travel easy with its touch in and out technology and makes it seem almost free because we don’t have to mess with cash. 

And bus lanes make it possible for the no 11 to get through heavy mid-afternoon traffic. 

And things like wheelchair ramps, which make our streets and pavements accessible to everyone. These all require designers who apply design to everyday life. My brother-in-law Ken is one such designer; he works as an engineer for the City of San Francisco and is in charge of ramps and other urban access.

These Anti-Homeless Spikes were installed in summer 2014 outside an apartment building in Southwark, London, to deter vagrants and other unwanted lingerers. 

This was just months after Crisis, the homeless charity, reported that sleeping rough has increased by 75% in the past three years.



The spikes, and the 3D-printed gun that sits alongside, are the dark side of design. But there are many, many more examples of the good, the design that helps us inhabit and move freely around our public spaces.

“Design is a mirror to our society: what we buy, how things are made, how we solve problems. The things in this gallery are evidence of social, political, technological and economic change, and they show that objects mean more than their sometimes modest material value.” (V&A)

When the cast of David was first revealed to Queen Victoria, she was so shocked (or so it's said; I suspect she was much hardier than the story suggests) that the museum had a plaster fig leaf made to cover his privates. It was hung on the statue from two strategically placed hooks. That fig leaf now takes pride of place in a special case behind the famous statue, as a reminder of our changing sensitivities.

The V&A says that in the early years of the museum, tin fig leaves were used on other nude statuary, but the authorities at South Kensington dismissed later objections, noting that "The antique casts gallery has been very much used by private lady teachers for the instruction of young girl students and none of them have ever complained even directly." 

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness?
Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet,
Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.

                      ‘Inversnaid’, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Here at Good at Looking we like to celebrate the un-celebrated. We know there are many everyday treasures that we overlook as we pass by in our rush to get from A to B. It’s wonderful to have a reminder that beauty lurks in unexpected places.

But it isn’t just about the beauty. Take weeds, for example. Urban weeds, to be exact. Are they, as the saying goes, just plants growing in the ‘wrong’ place? San Francisco-based artist and activist Mona Caron is someone who sees something more revolutionary in the tenacity of weeds.

(For an interesting look at an 'invasive' species, see The World Elsewhere blog post by Oliver Marshall, about the jacaranda of Harare, Zimbabwe.)

Those who won't be ignored

Also part of Caron's metaphor –which she makes solid through her creation of urban murals – is that of weeds as “symbolic of the invisible multitudes of un-valued living beings, whatever their origin, who exist at the margins, but not without gaining strength there. They may disturb when they their numbers can no longer be ignored. But in the context of suffocated environments, these undesirables are the first to carve a path for the rest of nature to follow, in due time.”

To see some of Mona Caron's work, watch her amazing video Weeds here (about 4 mins).

Wild medicine

Also giving new life to un-loved plants is the Phytology project, which brings together artists and botanists “to explore the medicinal properties of plants that are common to derelict urban environments”. In a ‘medicinal field’ created last year in Bethnal Green’s Nature Reserve, Phytology planted 32 wild species, generally regarded as common weeds but used in traditional medicine. They included yarrow, white dead-nettle, mallow, ribwort plantain, dandelion, red clover, and common nettle.

Phytology promotes the use of derelict space and seeks to challenge our ideas about the value and function of wildness within the urban ecosystem. Phytology’s producer, Michael Smythe says (quoted here) that both weeds and graffiti are “somewhat uncontrollable and persistent, and both offer a certain amount of complexity. To my eyes there's a direct relationship between street art and weeds, between wild plants, graffiti, urban environments, communication, and culture."  

Phytology's ‘medicinal field’ in Bethnal Green Nature Reserve opens again on 25 April 2015.

The dignity of pigeons and weeds

One artist involved in the Phytology project at Bethnal Green was illustrator Talya Baldwin, who contributed botanical drawings of dandelion, marshmallow, sweet woodruff, and 29 other species of wild plants. She says that she likes drawing things that cling to life against the odds and says of her work that it is “often about taking the time to observe and record things which are unloved, forgotten or unpopular. I draw sideshow performers, feral pigeons, weeds and rats. The drawings process is a way of recognising the subject, and giving it a sort of dignity in a quiet way.”

That’s a perspective of which Gerard Manley Hopkins would no doubt approve.

A wonderful article here by the Guardian's Jonathan Jones yesterday - responding to the leader of UKIP (the UK Independence Party), who suggested that mothers can avoid offending others by going into a corner to feed their babies. 

His comment followed a media hubbub about a young woman having tea at Claridge's who was asked to cover up with a napkin while she fed her baby. She tweeted a photo - and very quickly a mass breastfeeding protest took place outside the posh (and presumably embarrassed) establishment.

But back to Farage: as Jones explains, the works by Leonardo da Vinci, Giorgione, Caravaggio and others would have poor Nigel in a frenzy. Perhaps it will fuel UKIP's anti-Europe rhetoric and strengthen his argument that Britain should withdraw from the EU on the basis of offensive art.

Having been caught up in work-related business the past few months, I’ve neglected Good at Looking somewhat. I’ve been looking, but not writing. So it is with regrets and apologies that I am posting only now about an exhibition that ended last weekend. It’s too late to inspire readers to go and see it, but I hope it will inspire some of you to look out for future shows of her work.

I hadn’t known that I would love the work of Etel Adnan; in fact, I hadn’t even heard of this Lebanese-born artist until I happened upon her show at the White Cube in Bermondsey, which was also showing a more well-known artist, Tracey Emin. Emin’s show, ‘The Last Great Adventure is You’, features gouache nudes and large-scale embroidered versions of these beautifully rendered, thoughtful paintings. Emin is an artist who weaves her personal life into her work and lays bare the painful and traumatic as well the joyful and the tender.

The exhibition notes explains that Adnan works on a table rather than an easel, and she often applies paint directly from the tube in bold swipes across the canvas, resulting in compositions exuding intense energy. She is quoted as saying that ‘Images are not still. They are moving things. They come, they go, they disappear, they approach, they recede, and they are not even visual – ultimately they are pure feeling.’

For more on Etal Adnan, see here.

White Cube, Bermondsey: Tracey Emin, 'The Last Great Adventure is You', and Etel Adnan, 'Inside the White Cube' 8 October - 16 November 2014

...a series inspired by my experience as a Welcoming Ambassador at the Victoria & Albert Museum

This time of year is London Design Festival time at the V&A, when visitors to the museum can enjoy a number of innovative temporary installations by contemporary designers. The 9-day festival celebrates design London-wide, with more than 300 events across the city, but the V&A is the heart and hub.

One of my favourite installations is Ama, a blown-glass work inspired by, and paying homage to, the pearl-diving women of Japan. The piece, the work of Cyrpiot-born and London-based designer Michael Anastassiades in collaboration with Italian design house Flos, is made up of mouth-blown opaline spheres and brass. Laid out as a larger-than-life pearl necklace, resting in the dark on the floor of room 118 of the British Gallery, it glows and draws you in.

The Ama are deep-sea divers, all women, harvesting pearls, seaweed, and other treasures from the floor of the ocean. These ‘pearl diving mermaids’ were first mentioned in a Japanese poem in the oldest anthology of Japanese poetry, the Man’yoshu, in about 750.

The V&A gives an evocative description:

“The simple, even primitive beauty of these women who harvested seaweed, turban shells and abalone from beneath the coastal waters can be tracked 2000 years back in history, as recorded in the oldest Japanese anthology of poetry. Only equipped with visual acuity, lung capacity and a hunter’s instinct, Ama women would dive some 30 feet down in cold water, confronting minus zero conditions at times and only wearing a loincloth, in search of the goods lying on the ocean bed.”

I got a bit lost myself when, after seeing this beautifully mysterious installation, I did a bit of research on the Ama. Why had I never heard of them before? I discovered a blog post about the Ama, with photographs, that tells more about this community. They continue today as an example of sustainable fishing and a model of women earning an independent living. They dive up to 25 metres, for 4 hours a day, without oxygen tanks. When they surface they make a soft whistling sound, known as ‘Isobue’, to expel the breath they’ve been holding for up to 2 minutes at a time. Most are older women who have carried out this work for many years; according to the Gakuran blog, one woman continues to dive well into her 90s.

I also found an article with this description of the life of the Ama women during diving season, which:

“revolves around the ama hut, or amagoya. This is the place where the divers gather in the mornings to prepare for the day, eating, chatting and checking their equipment. After diving they return to the hut to shower, rest and warm their bodies to recover from their day’s work. The atmosphere in the hut is one of relaxation and camaraderie, for six months of the year the women are free from the usual familial and social duties they are expected to perform, and they are able to connect with other women who share their love of the ocean and diving. In the past, when career opportunities for women in a small village were limited and married women were expected to stay at home under the watchful eye of their mother in law, life as an ama must have been an attractive prospect despite the tough conditions and potential dangers.”

But the culture appears to be fading out, and the work no longer presents the unique opportunity it once did for women to earn a lucrative independent income. Partly that’s down to changes in the ocean environment; although the Ama introduced rules, including limits to diving time, to protect the ocean’s ecosystem and avoid over-fishing, pollution has reduced the growth of abalone. And as women’s career prospects have improved in the past 60 or so years, the draw of pearl diving has declined.

“Many of the divers active today are in their 50s and 60s, with very few ama aged in their 20s and 30s. The work of the ama seems to be a unique opportunity for Japanese women to engage in competitive, exciting, potentially lucrative work that provides a great amount of freedom and independence but at the same time allows women to be part of a tight-knit group of fellow enthusiasts that life as a housewife would not have afforded. In previous generations this was very rare and would explain why the job was attractive despite the harsh conditions and potential danger.”

The Ama fascinate both in their mythical image as modern-day mermaids and the pragmatic feminism of economic independence. It’s interesting that at the V&A we just had a very successful exhibit on pearls, but I don’t remember the ’pearl-diving mermaids’ featuring largely in that. Anastassiades has created a moving tribute – hopefully one that will prompt visitors to learn more about these divers and their culture. 

It's downright hot in London lately, and every day seems to pose a new sartorial challenge. Heat isn't something we're used to, and heat combined with unpredictable storms, relentless humidity, and (dare I say) the occasional burst of sunshine throws many people here into a panic. We don't yet have the art of summer figured out. But we do have the start of a summer of art - free, gorgeous, and right on your doorstep.

Today is the start of this year's Art Everywhere project here in the UK. Around the country, and until the end of August, 25 of the nation's favourite art from public collections will be displayed on posters, billboards, at bus stops and on taxis. The works were chosen by public vote and represent a broad cross-section of artists, styles, time periods and subjects. Here's one of my favourites.

The selected works include one of Grayson Perry's amazing tapestries from his series 'The Vanity of Small Differences', as well as sculpture by Henry Moore ('King and Queen'), a photograph, 'Iago', by Julia Margaret Cameron, and paintings by David Hockney, John Constable, Laura Knight, and many others. Be on the look out for all 25.

“I say Brothers, We are three Clever Fellows to Preach Against Tippling. Tippling, Do you say, I call this Down Right, Hard, Drinking. You may say what you Please Gentlemen, but I think Wine makes Our Hearts Merry.”

'Three Sober Preachers', oil paint on canvas, c.1860

One of the questions that comes to mind when visiting the new British Folk Art exhibit at Tate Britain is whether the pieces on display are ‘art’ or ‘craft’. Does it matter what we call them? There has long been, and continues to be, a lively debate on the distinction between the two, reflecting a degree of snobbery on both sides of the divide. This exhibit doesn’t give a definitive answer, and nor should it.

The Tate, of course, is an art museum, and this exhibit is an exuberant celebration of the art we come across in our everyday lives – shop signs, for example – and the art we make in the everyday task of living, such as making quilts from scraps, collages from found objects, and driftwood sculpture. 

And it’s not just the terms ‘art’ and ‘craft’ that are contentious. “For many people”, writes Jeff McMillan in his introductory essay to the exhibit’s catalogue, “folk is a four-letter word. But because we all have a different and vague idea of what it refers to, it works like an umbrella to cover many other terms such as ‘vernacular’, ‘popular’, ‘rural’, ‘traditional’ and is a second cousin to labels like ’self-taught’, ‘naive’ and ‘outsider’." There is also a connection with ‘art brut’ – raw or uncooked art that is uncontaminated by culture – a term coined in the 1940s by French artist Jean Dubuffett. 

In her closing essay in the exhibit’s catalog, curator Ruth Kenny writes that one definition that has become a useful tool in understanding folk art is that of American sociologist Gary Alan Fine, who suggested the idea of ‘identity art’: Kenny writes: “Moving away from a focus on the finished product and the response it invokes, identity art privileges the characteristics of the creators and the circumstances and process of making.”

Many of the pieces in the exhibit are rooted in the notion of community identity – whether the community of a courting couple who together produced the Bellamy quilt during their year-long engagement, or the members of the community who contributed to the production of shop signs.

Wherever you stand on the art/craft debate (or indeed whether or not you see any distinction), you're sure to enjoy the works in this show and the questions they provoke.

British Folk Art is on at Tate Britain until 31 August 2014.

"...we must be prepared for a journey of discovery, we must start without any preconceptions; most of all, we must be open to the beauties of fortuity."
                                                                                                Hannah Hoch, A Few Words on Photomontage

Sometimes you're unexpectedly struck by the beauty of everyday, accidental design, as I was the other day when walking the Thames-side path between Fulham and Hammersmith. Just look at the satisfying geometrical patterns in this metal gate leading to a pier:

It reminded me of a textile design I saw in the Danish Design Museum in Copenhagen on my short visit there last December:

Writer Alexandra Horowitz says that we miss the possibility of being surprised by what is hidden in plain sight right in front of us. In her book about everyday observation, On Looking, she explains that we forget our daily journeys to and fro because we fail to pay attention to the journey to begin with - we're too busy talking on the phone, listening to a playlist, planning dinner - and "we miss the world making itself available to be observed". Her dog inspired her to consider how these journeys can be done better. In researching the book, she took a walk around the block with several different experts, including her dog and ten others who have a distinct perspective on what they see (or smell) around them. The walks re-awakened her sense of wonder at her surroundings, something I think we could all do with from time to time.

“To make dry toast properly, a great deal of attention is required, much more, indeed, than people generally suppose.”

Mrs Beeton, Household Management, 1861

The toast rack appears to be a purely British invention from the late 18th century. They were sometimes referred to as ‘toast machines’, and Mrs Beeton (the 19th-century household management guru) wrote about the importance of toast racks in her well-known book Household Management in 1861, advising that “As soon as each piece is ready, it should be put into a rack, or stood upon its edges, and sent quickly to table.”

As useful objects, toast racks have somewhat fallen out of favour recently. As examples of design, however, they are timeless. I’ve taken three examples, each of which serves as a reflection of the significant design innovations/movements of their time...and a fourth that demonstrates the timelessness of good design.

1) The 18th Century - Hester Bateman toast rack

The first piece in our ‘Toast Rack Tour’ is in the Silver Galleries, room 65. It was produced in the workshop of Hester Bateman, a successful silversmith in the late 18th century. She learned her trade from her husband, and she set up her own business when he died in 1760. The V&A says that it’s likely that she managed the workshop rather than made the silver pieces herself. Her firm was one of the most technologically advanced silver firms in London at the time, exporting across England and North America.

2) The 19th Century – Christopher Dresser toast rack

The second piece in our tour of toast racks is in the British Galleries, room 125, on level 4.

Freelance designer Christopher Dresser is, in my book, the King of Toast Racks. His toast racks are among his most innovative and recognisable designs – simple lines, striking profiles, form and function brought together in an apparently effortless way.

3) The 20th Century – Robert Welch toast rack

The third item in the tour is in the 20th Century Gallery on level 3.

Mid-century designer Robert Welch carried on the tradition of Arts and Crafts designers but like Dresser he embraced mass production. His Campden Range from 1957 demonstrated an early use of stainless steel for dining tableware. The rocket-like shapes of his candelabra and cruet set reflect the interest in the emerging Space Age.

Most of us experience some version of Sunday night or Monday morning blues at some point in our lives. But the blues aren’t always a sign of feeling down. Blues in music can be exuberant. Blue skies are rejuvenating. Blues can be life affirming and a welcome shock to the system.

Take this ultramarine cockerel by contemporary artist Katharina Fritsch. Standing on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, it’s an unmissable wake-up call, a cock-a-doodle-doo of a "Good morning London!"

And if it could speak, it might say “Come and see the Veronese exhibit at the National Gallery just behind me.” Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice displays around 50 of the sumptuous paintings by Paolo Veronese, one of the most renowned artists in 16th-century Venice.

The colours in his works are stunning, even after more than 450 years, and the fabrics and settings are lush and detailed.

So next time you’re feeling down, head to Trafalgar Square for a bit of colour therapy and embrace the blues.

The restaurant at the V&A was originally a place for evening meals – for Victorian folk to get a reasonably priced bite to eat after work before wandering the collection to be educated in, and inspired by, what was good taste and what was bad. 

For me, breakfast, not dinner, is the most inspiring meal of the day. These days, you can get a very decent breakfast in the Museum’s restaurant. And afterwards, you can wander the collection and marvel at objects inspired by the most inspirational meal of the day.

The Museum’s description notes that although the egg stand is elegant, a “minor drawback was the fact that the eggcup feet (which provided stability) had to be smaller than the bowls in order to lodge in the holes of the stand.” A bit of a fashion victim, then, but also a survivor. The creamware examples were vulnerable to breakage, so it is rare to have one intact as this one is.

Who knew that breakfast at the V&A could serve up such a sumptuous smorgasbord of delights?

On a recent visit to Copenhagen’s Museum of Design and Art, I came across this unrelentingly cheerful textile by Marie Gudme Leth (1895-1997). The textile is striking in itself, but I was amazed to learn what a significant impact Leth herself had on Danish design.

Leth transformed Danish textile production by introducing screen-printing through her Danish Calico Printing Works, a studio she set up in 1935. Before that she had travelled in Indonesia in her 20s and learned batik techniques, then experimented with block printing and set up a workshop producing block-printed textiles.

In 20th Century Pattern Design, Lesley Jackson writes that Denmark had no tradition of printed textiles until Leth established her screen-printing studio. Leth turned to screen-printing (which she learned in Germany) after finding block-printing to be too limiting in terms of production.

Her early work has many parallels with that of Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher, two English textile designers who also set up their own studio in the 1920s. Barron and Larcher used labour-intensive hand-made production techniques for their block-printed textiles, including making their own natural vegetable dyes. Like Leth, Barron and Larcher used a limited colour palette and raw or unbleached linen for their block-printed textiles.

There the similarities seem to end, because Leth was interested in techniques that would allow for industrial production of printed textiles – hence her shift to screen-printing. Barron and Larcher continued with their hand methods until they closed their studio in 1939. (Interestingly, one of their apprentices in the 1920s had been Enid Marx, who went on to design for London Underground and the Utility Scheme, working closely with manufacturers on industrial production of her designs. I wrote about Marx in an earlier blog post – Walking the Block).

That's the slogan for this year's London Design Festival, which starts today - a celebration of creative London, with a cornucopia of activities, talks, installations and displays around the city, until 22 September. The Victoria and Albert Museum is a hub for the festival - see the V&A festival site for a listing of events. Most are free, either drop-in events or installations around the galleries.

There are hundreds of events around the city during the festival - for details, see the main design festival site. 

A person’s heaven is easily made. 'Tis but black eyes and lemonade.’
Thomas Moore, 1813

Catch it while you can! The exuberantly fun Black Eyes and Lemonade exhibit at Whitechapel Gallery is on only until next month. It celebrates the work of Barbara Jones (1912-78), the collector and curator of English popular art and author of The Unsophisticated Arts (1951). Specifically, it celebrates an exhibition curated by Jones for the Festival of Britain in 1951.

Jones celebrated and championed the judgements made by collectors, makers and consumers and the collective desire for beauty. The 1951 exhibit, in the final years of post-war rationing in Britain, had the feel of a bazaar, a celebration of consuming, with every object pleasing and of equal value.  Even better is hearing how she did her collecting - driving around England with a friend in a converted taxi.

Art director Simon Costin writes about Jones and the Black Eyes and Lemonade exhibit in a post on blog Caught by the River.  Jones, Costin says, collected objects with "long folkloric histories, such as horse brasses, corn dollies, canal boat artwork, ships’ figureheads, and the pearly King & Queen outfits." But in bringing these together with "post-industrial advertising devices like the Idris Talking Lemon, beer mats, pest control adverts, shop posters", Jones

"...gave ‘folk art’ or ‘popular art’ a cultural currency, she made it relevant, exciting. And by putting the machine-made and the hand-made side by side, she blurred the boundaries between what was considered art, liberating a way of seeing that continues to widen our appreciation of the ordinary, the everyday."

I was reminded of Kurt Schwitters, the German artist who devised the concept of Merz in his collages. (Tate Britain recently had a fascinating retrospective of Schwitters’ work.) He incorporated found objects and litter, sweet wrappers and used bus tickets in his work, giving equal value to the everyday and the fine, the costly and the cheap.

In very different ways, both Jones and Schwitters found treasure in the ordinary. 

Black Eyes and Lemonade, Whitechapel Gallery, free, until September 2013.

Bowie fever is over. For now, at least, and here – David Bowie Is has started its world tour and is moving on to Toronto. It was a sell-out show, and every day people queued up outside the museum to try to get tickets. It was an amazing experience, with a high-tech sound system that moved with you throughout the exhibit, with excerpts of interviews and, of course, music. 

For some reason Bowie hadn’t really registered with me in my youth. Maybe it was the time - he was experimenting with music, style and personas in the 1970s, when I was still a preteen. Maybe it was the fact that I grew up in the USA, and he was definitely a Brit-grown artist. But neither of those seems adequate excuse for my lack of appreciation of him and his work. What resonates with me now – in middle age, with relatively tame musical tastes – are his energy for mining a vast range of art and talent to seek out inspiration and the creative focus he applied to doing so. There is an intellectual joy that comes across in this exploration of his work. He found inspiration in theatre, literature, visual art, performing art, fashion. He was also a painter – something maybe many of his fans don’t know. The portrait of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima (who committed suicide, or seppuku, in 1970) that Bowie painted during his years in Berlin is particularly beautiful and haunting.

There is a certain irony in learning that Bowie was born just after the establishment of the welfare state in Britain – 1947. The day before I saw the exhibit was a sad day for Britain – a complete rolling back of the social welfare state and a one-sided renegotiation of the social contract, brought about by drastic and nasty cuts to welfare benefits, privatisation of the NHS and withdrawal of most legal aid. How much of Bowie’s creativity was nurtured by the safety net that existed while he developed? Perhaps not a lot – he was, after all, earning a fortune by his mid-20s. But in a single generation we have gone from supporting young people to go to university (yes, in a more elitist way than now), ensuring everyone has health care even if they’re not working, and providing a social housing net that worked for many years and kept London vibrant and diverse – to a position where young people have no idea if they will be able to get jobs, whether or not they’ve gone to university, have very few housing options (especially in London), and who in their lifetime might see the disintegration of a much-admired system of universal health care. We see fear of protest (in light of the draconian sentences dealt out to some rioters and student demonstrators last year) and long-term squatters being evicted.

Rebel rebel, your face is a mess. It makes me wonder where the future Bowies will come from.

See a trailer for the film of the David Bowie Is exhibit.