‘Sipped
from cup and saucer in front of tiny tea shop. Poured from thermos flask.
Brewed with water, freshly boiled on primus stove. In car park and lay-by. On
trestle table and fold-out chair. In church hall. Park. Garden. Seaside. Oh,
where on earth would the English be without their cup of tea?’ (Martin Parr)
|
This country’s seemingly endemic nostalgia and shared
cultural memory is what shapes the way our country and lives are led; like an
unconscious manifesto it preserves rituals, style and mood. In this piece of
writing I would like to explore how our home-grown England has cultivated this
need for nostalgia and narrow down on to concepts of rural idyll.
George Orwell’s essay The Lion and Unicorn, Your England;
focuses on the clichés and senses of the English life ‘It is a culture as
individual as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and
gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes.
It has a flavour of its own’ but interestingly he then questions the way that a
whole nation can have this sentimental longing for things one has not actually
experienced. ‘What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of
1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph
your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.’ Is the
nostalgia that we feel for these things actually legislated nostalgia
explained by Douglas Coupland in the early 1990s ‘to force a body of people to
have memories they do not actually posses’.
One of the clearest examples of legislated nostalgia in
England is the iconic and trite poster, Keep Calm and Carry on. This familiar
poster uses simple typography with a reassuring message and consoling iconography
of the crown. The poster itself
was never actually mass produced so even those who can recall the 1940s would
be highly unlikely to remember it, but still it is supposedly a symbol for
every English person of patriotic togetherness. Owen Hatherley writes ‘ The poster is the most visible form of a vague
nostalgia for a benevolent, quasi-modernist English bureaucratic aesthetic.’
English Politicians have exhausted using legislated
nostalgia to raise morale within times of austerity, implying how our country
was and should strive to stay. They seem to be looking back fondly to move forward,
enforcing a sense of familiarity and belonging to the people, Englishness seems
to need sustenance on most accounts. One of John Majors speeches in 1993
describes the England we all strive to relive ‘Fifty years on from now, Britain
will still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer,
invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell
said, 'Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist' and, if
we get our way, Shakespeare will still be read even in school’ During times of
post austerity how would this affect the sense of nostalgia and looking back to
find idyll like the scenes John Major talks of.
A recent exhibition at the Towner Gallery displayed
lithographs and paintings commissioned by the Lyons teashops in the 1950s. In
these drab post war years, every high street in Britain seemed to host a Lyons teashop.
These were the era’s community hubs, an expression of the times in the food
they served, the smoke filled atmosphere, the gentle murmur of the clientele’s
conversation, damp hats hanging from the stand in the corner. To lift the décor
of every establishment, but with limited rescources at their disposal, lyons commissioned
three series of lithographs from some of britains most popular artists –
including Edward Bawden, John Piper, David Gentleman, John Minton, William
Scott and John Nash. The tea shops became galleries, the lithographs their
wallpaper. And in these images, in their subject matter style and hues, the
artists reflected the times, with sombre recollection of the war alongside a
new optimism for the future. Within the commission letter the artists were
asked to document British life, without putting their clients off their iced
fancies. I take these tea shops and this commission as my starting point in
documenting English life in a time of austerity and how this affected this
national nostalgia.
Overall in the pieces a sense of
optimism and relief is portrayed, new fashions, leisure and the reinvention of
life after the war is shown. But between these pieces I experienced quiet
windows of sadness, an unconscious sense of post war loss. The two pieces which
struck a chord with me through imagery and use of materials both portray scenes
of leisure but arguably are very different in atmosphere.
Anthony Gross’s lithograph Herne bay pier created in 1947 depicts a leisure scene at Herne bay pier; groups of
people stand around talking and fishing with children playing, new fashions are
on show in the harsh weather that blows the fishing lines all over the frame.
The pier leads out to the distance initiating strong perspective and breaking
up the wild, uncontrollable waves. The colours are bright, mainly focusing on
yellows and blues with patches of bright reds picking out figures. This is one
of the first of many pieces of documentation of seaside leisure in England and
has a light playful feel and above anything depicts the harshness of the weather
and the comical way the English go to the seaside even in a gale. This image
contrives the feelings of the artist forcing oneself to look forward for the
sake of the character of the commission, using leisure as his subject in this
instance he has justifiably caught a perfect glimpse of the English
characteristics and is a honest and positive depiction of Seaside leisure. This
image seems to me to be nostalgic in 2013 but in the late 1940s this must have
been a current depiction, of the new clean slate of Britain.
This use of
documenting British life through seaside leisure in England has been visited
thoroughly by two English photographers who create strong nostalgic and voyeuristic
photographs, emphasizing the quirky eccentricities and characteristics of the
British; Martin Parr and Tony Ray Jones. Tony Ray Jones encountered in the mid-
1960s, the way in which New York photographers were able to use the streets as
the back drop for their work, he was keen to return to England and apply this
formula to a country that had never been photographed this way before. He found
upon on return that the beach was this perfect back drop and through his images
he was ‘able to organise apparent chaos, bizarre social reactions and
incongruous narratives.’ (Martin Parr. ed. 2013, Only in England, London,
Science Museum.)Creating these ambiguous images Martin Parr was deeply
influenced and carried on this way of documenting British life, his earlier
photographs mainly focused on the idyll of rural life and then he started to
focus on seaside leisure and the underbelly of society through photographing
poverty stricken areas and Margate at the weekends.
These later
photographs are surprisingly sombre and gritty and remind me of a lithograph in
the Lyons tea shop display ‘Billiard Saloon’ by Ruskin Sphere, although this too depicts an act of leisure,
atmosphere is questionably sombre and down. This image narrows in of a man
taking a shot at the billiards table in a billiards saloon, the table is lit up
and the green of the surface and billiards balls are shown in bright colours.
The rest of the painting is immersed in darkness and the main billiards player
is roughly depicted taking his shot, cigarette in mouth. In the background
fragmented figures appear and the corners of lights above the tables. The sense
of this smoky, dark room filled with muffled voices of men drinking and playing
billiards creates an image of sadness and one of these men escaping the
memories and pressing austerity in this dark environment. Even though this
painting is atmospherically sad I still feel a sense of nostalgia for England’s
cultural heritage created by environments like working mens clubs and smoky billiard
saloons. Contemporary musicians like ‘The Enemy’ write of these places and
create a strong mental image of one; I can’t decide whether it is loving or
distasteful but still they find inspiration with this past. The Enemy’s song
‘We’ll live and die in these towns’ talks of ‘smoky rooms where haggled old
women with cheap perfume say, it never happens for people like us’ and goes on
to ‘dirty dishes from a tv meal that went cold from the wind through a smashed
up window’
These most certainly
aren’t the depictions which John Major creates with his speech; they are gritty
and describe the poverty side of Britain’s nostalgia. I have neither experienced John Majors nor The
Enemy’s vision of Britain. Maybe they themselves haven’t experienced this
imagery they speak of but still personally feel this sentimental belonging to
the places like myself. Maybe this cumulative feeling is due to artists like
Anthony Gross, Ruskin Sphere, Tony Ray Jones and Martin Parr who all document
British life; and their work could be seen as legislated nostalgia. I have come
to believe the version of Britain they portray is my own, along with everyone
else who belongs to this nation.
The contemporary romantic Musician and poet Peter Doherty also
uses England and this unique atmosphere we all think of it as inspiration. In
his song Albion he creates an England like that of The Enemy. ‘More gin in
teacups and leaves on the lawn, violence in dole queues and the pale thin girl behind the checkout’
So he sees this sombre austerity stricken side of Britain that makes up its
cultural heritage but then again also the positive beauty of Britain, the rural
idyll. His song ‘Arcady’ speaks of arcadia ‘In Arcady, your life trips along it's
pure and simple as the shepherd's song, seraphic pipes along the way in
Arcady.’ This arcadia (unspoiled, wilderness where one can find peace) could
also be described as idyll; a concept in which Britain thinks they boast. Where
does this concept that Britain’s Countryside can be described as rural idyll
come from?
G. E. Mingys book ‘Rural Idyll’ looks into the changing
perceptions of rural idyll in England and brings to light the connection with
the changes made through the industrial and agricultural revolutions in society
and how this affected the way the arts portrayed our ‘rural idyll’. It talks of
how more people were forced to move to the cities and more and more little
villages died out or became bigger towns, creating ‘a profound nostalgia of the
urban middle classes for their rural past’. But this wild countryside they
remembered from their rural lives was becoming less and less similar to what
they imagined, the country we know now and that was developing then is actually
an industrial and manufactured landscape; the rolling hills seen as idyllic are products
of labour and farming. This wild Rural idyll has not been a realistic or current
concept since the beginning of the 19th century.
This change in the countryside and perceptions of is summed
up in the arts in England in the 19th century that focused on the
landscape of the country, the Romantics strived to ignore the current changing
society and focus on beauty and the rural idyll found in the past landscape
where as the opposing group of artists the social realists concentrated on the
current change and the strong industrial use and feel to the countryside. Mingay
writes in ‘Rural Idyll’ ‘The rural idyll is a changing concept: the countryside
of the end of the twentieth century is very different from that of a hundred
years ago, just as that was different from the countryside in previous eras.
Each generation of country dwellers and observers sees what it wants to see in
the land: romantic beauty, nostalgic traces of the rustic past, peace,
tranquillity, despoiled landscapes, brutal intrusions of modernizatio, hurry,
noise, pollution.’
Mingay also comments‘ Louis James remarks in his essay in
the 19th century literature that the use of the landscape to reflect
moral character goes back to the origins of the novel, and may be found, for
instance, in Fielding and Jane Austen’
This makes we wonder wether I could analogise the fabricated idea of
rural idyll and our concepts of it with the way our nation treats nostalgia. Does
this concept of rural idyll actually encapsulate the national psyche? The legislated nostalgia which we have fallen
under has never existed in reality, likewise with notions of rural idyll. We
long for something which one has never and will never have; the grass is always
greener on the other side (literally), so why not fantasize or escape to
something which was once possible that joins the nation.
George Orwell comments: ‘It is your civilization, it is you.
However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it
for any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered
into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side the
grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.’ Through a very long and unconscious game of
Chinese whispers artists, writers,
musicians, political leaders and so on have been sentimentally spoon feeding us
legislated nostalgia to join together the nation inviting everyone with open
arms into the ‘club’ that is England. We
have paved our future with our past and if it brings happiness then this
naivety in beauty of a nation is harmless, hopefully it does not taint or stint
society. Martin Parr speaks of this ‘ I used to think how lucky Ray – Jones was
to see the England in the 1960s, but know full well when the next generation
look through photos taken now, how they too will be envious of the way things
look.
RFERENCES.
BOOKS.
J.L. Carr, 1980, A month in the country, London, Penguin
classics.
G.E.Mingay, 1989, The Rural Idyll, London, Routledge
Kate Fox, 2005, Watching the English, Great Britain, Hodder
and Stoughton
Paul Jennings, 1969, The living Village, London, Hodder and
Stoughton
Nick Groom, 2012, The Gothic, Oxford, Oxford university
press
Evelyn Waugh, 1984, Brideshead Bevisited, Middlesex, Penquin
Books Limited
Yi –Fu Tuan, 1998, Escapism, USA, The John Hopkins
University Press
Susan Stewart, 2007, On Longing, USA, Duke University Press
EXHIBITIONS.
Only in England, photographs by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin
Parr - 21st September 2013 – 16 March 2014. Media space, Science
Museum.
The Lyons Teashop lithographs, Art in the time of austerity
– 13th July – 22cnd September 2013, The Towner.
Norman Ackroyd, The Furthest Lands, A Journey round the
British Isles – September 3rd – September21st 2013, Eames Fine Art.
WEBSITES.
Mark Overton,
2011-02–17, Agricultural revolution in England- 1500-1850. BBC History. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/agricultural_revolution_01.shtml
25-04-1993,
What a lot of tosh, The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/leading-article-what-a-lot-of-tosh-1457335.html
George
Orwell, Work–Essays–The Lion and the Unicorn.George Orwell, 1903-1950. http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/lionunicorn.html
Robert Yates,
30/11/12, Patrick Keiler on London http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/30/patrick-keiller-london-original-interview
30/10/08,
Legislated nostalgia,Yesterdays obsession is todays nostalgia, blogspot http://obsessionnostalgia.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/legislated-nostalgia.html
Jonny Fink,
04/29/96, Douglas Couplands generation X Neo logisms. http://www.scn.org/~jonny/genx.html
Patrick
Wintour and Stephen Bates, 09/10/1993, Maor goes back to the old values, the
guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/1993/oct/09/conservatives.past
Mark
Mazower,02/09/09, Wartime nostalgia blind us to Britain’s changed realities,
The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/02/second-world-war-nostalgia-myths
(Owen Hatherley. Lash
out and cover up. Available from: http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/tag/keep-calm-and-carry-on-poster
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