Good Grief:Feeling a proper Charlie at Somerset House.

AAUGH!

"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me 'this is going to take more than one night". - Charles M.Schulz.

In going wrong, Charles M.Schulz ended up going very very right. In an interview with him playing on a big screen in Somerset House's extensive, and very busy, Good Grief, Charlie Brown exhibition we can hear Schulz relating that his proudest achievement is that the term 'security blanket', something he coined for his character Linus van Pelt, has now been firmly accepted as part of everyday English language.

But that's just one of his achievements. Snoopy ended up the official mascot of the Apollo 11 moon landings in 1969 (the first cartoon character on the moon?), around the same time that same beagle was being presented as a potential candidate for president (California eventually passed legislation making it illegal to enter the name of fictional characters on ballots), Umberto Eco praised the poetry of his work ("they are monstrous infantile reductions of all the neuroses of a modern citizen of industrial civilisation"), and equally laudatory correspondence was received from Dr Benjamin Spock and Billie Jean King. Schulz's wife, Joyce, received a condolence letter from Hillary Clinton following his death. 

But most notable of all, to me anyway, is how Peanuts made depression, alienation, and anxiety (all genuine things in childhood - as well as adulthood) part of the conversation of everyday life. None of his characters were perfect. They all had foibles. Issues even. But that just made them seem more real. Like you and your mates. Even if some of the more American references to baseball and golfers like Sam Snead didn't really make sense over here in the UK.

The exhibition mainly drills down on the story of how Schulz and his creations became famous, the cultural impact they had, and the cultural impact they're still having. How they broke barriers and how they sneaked some really quite subversive ideas into the mainstream by doing it with a cartoon and a soft jazz soundtrack. But there are also contributions from contemporary artists (some better than others) which, while taking nothing away, don't really add that much.

One thing's for certain though. It's a bloody big exhibition. As big as one of Snoopy's daydreams.

FriendsWithYou - Lil Cloudy Brown (2018)

FriendsWithYou - Happy Little Flier (2018)

"When I was small, I believed that my face was so bland that people would not recognise me if they saw me some place other than where they normally would. I thought my ordinary appearance was a perfect disguise" - Charles M. Schulz.

Schulz was born in Minneapolis in 1922 and grew up in its twin city Saint Paul. His dad was German and his mother had Norwegian heritage. He loved drawing, he loved his family dog, he loved sports but, also, quite clearly, he had the lack of confidence that so many children do. Which is good. The confident ones grow up to be psychopaths!

He created Peanuts in 1950 and at its height it was reaching around 355,000,000 people around the globe. It was syndicated to over 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries, translated into 21 languages. By the time Schulz died in 2000 he'd created 17,897 strips, all drawn by his own hand. The story of Peanuts is very much the story of the life, the experiences, and the mind of one Charles M. Schulz.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1960)

The kid they nicknamed 'Sparky' (after the racehorse Spark Plug from the Barney Google comic strip) used to spend Sunday mornings reading comics, or 'the funnies', together with his father. Mickey Mouse, Popeye, Skippy, that kind of thing. Aged six young Sparky showed an aptitude for drawing and, not least because this was the only thing he'd excelled at thus far, he decided there and then on his future career path.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1953)

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1953)

He had a passion for ice skating and baseball too (there's both his pitcher's mitt and a pair of his skates encased within vitrine cases for visitors to gawp at for unspecified periods of time) and in these team games young Charles would begin to understand how friendships played out. There's also a suggestion at Somerset House that the 'perfect sheet of ice' would become a metaphor for his life as well as a recurring motif, underlining the importance of community and friendship, but also speaking to his persistence and his search for perfection. You'll need a stronger stomach than mine to keep that down.

Whatever, he loved sport so much that when he got rich and moved to California with Joyce in the sixties he built his own rink. The Redwood Empire Ice Arena (or Snoopy's Home Ice as it became known) lost money from the off but served as a gift to the community and Charles took his breakfast every morning at the rink's Warm Puppy Cafe (English muffin with grape jelly, apparently - there's a transatlantic breakfast if ever I've seen one).

Ice Skates used by Charles M. Schulz (1970s)

At the age of fourteen, Schulz submitted a cartoon of his much loved dog, Spike, to Ripley's Believe it Or Not! A year later they published it. It was Schulz's first step on the road to global stardom. Work in Chicago followed and Schulz started to flesh out rudimentary versions of some of the Peanuts characters in a strip with the apple pie name of Li'l Folks.

Charles M. Schulz - Li'l Folks (c. late 1940s)

"The three years I spent in the army taught me all I needed to know about loneliness" - Charles M. Schulz.

In 1943, he was drafted into the US Army. It wasn't an enjoyable experience. While he was away his mother died of cervical cancer and after a short spell of service in both France and Germany he returned to Saint Paul and started work at a company called Art Instruction (who he'd previously taken a correspondence course with). Li'l Folks began to run in the local St Paul Pioneer Press and soon it was syndicated to seven other papers under a new name: - Peanuts.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1955)

Initially, it was not a name of which Schulz approved (peanuts being slang for being paid badly) but it was the one that stuck. Other words and phrases became motifs in his work too. 'Aaugh!', 'Blockhead'', 'Rats!', and, of course 'Good Grief' itself. He loved language but not necessarily of the hi-falutin' variety. He loved the way people conversed everyday, almost musical in their delivery, and had a particular affection for words beginning with B (the aforementioned 'blockhead' but also 'beagle', 'Beethoven', and, best of all 'bleah!'.

He loved onomatopoeia as much as Roy Lichtenstein. A 'pow' here, a 'bonk' there, the occasional 'zoom' and a none too liberal sprinkling of 'whap' (if you'll pardon the expression). Emotions were created using dots and lines. Dark heavy lines denoted frustration and sometimes, in cases of extreme vexation, text would be jettisoned entirely in favour of dark brooding scribbles.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1958)

Francois Curlet - Charlie Brown Job (2000)

Francois Curlet - Charlie's Flag (2005)

The French artist Francois Curlet so identified with the 'everyman' or 'loser' character of Charlie Brown that not only did he make a flag based on his iconic, and seemingly only, sweater but he also imagined the peanut stand he'd have to work behind after becoming unemployed following Schulz's death.

It's in keeping with the way Schulz would burden poor Chuck with more disappointment than any child (or grown adult) could reasonably take. He's rubbish at his beloved baseball, the girl he loves doesn't even know he exists, and he is fully convinced that he has absolutely no worth whatsoever. Charlie Brown goes beyond existentialism into full on nihilism (the American artist Robert Sikoryak reimagined Kafka's Metamorphosis with Charlie Brown in the Gregor Samsa/giant insect role) and yet, somehow, he drags himself out of bed each morning. Every day (or at least it seems) he wakes up hopeful.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1953)

Ryan Gander - Linus Van Pelt and a world of Endeavour, Ambition and Optimism (2008)

His friends don't have it much easier. Witness poor Lionel van Pelt kept awake at night by the fear of abandonment. Before Peanuts, the exhibition tells us (and I'm not one to question it), no other popular comic strip confronted philosophical ideas about despair, loneliness, and anxiety. Despite Schulz's modesty, he called it "a plain old comic strip, which helps to sell newspapers", it did have echoes of Sartre and Camus in its attempt to either create meaning in a universe that has none or accept the utter futility of life.

Charlie Brown lying in bed with a sack over his head (looking like something by Philip Guston) or staring blankly into the mid-distance repulsed by both his average looks and his average intelligence (and mistaking them for less than average) speaks to anyone who's ever failed at something they really wanted to succeed at. Anyone who's been rejected in love, friendship, or the workplace. Anyone's who stared into the void for so long that its become their reality.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1968)

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1968)

One of the earliest running, and oft-repeated (for nearly FIFTY years), gag in Peanuts was the one where Charlie was coaxed into kicking a ball by Lucy, something of his nemesis, only for her to pull it away from him at the last second and for Charlie, screaming in pain, to go arse over tit. The curators of the show have quite rightly observed that this tale has parallels in the Greek myth of Sisyphus who was condemned to push a boulder to the top of a hill, watch it roll down, and push it back up again for the rest of his life. Peanuts as Samuel Beckett.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1968)

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1968)

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1963)

When Lucy wasn't humiliating Charlie Brown on the sports field she was scalping him for a nickel at her dubious looking psychiatric booth. The booth first appeared in 1959 and Lucy's attempts to "tell it as it is" proved utterly useful to poor, distressed Charlie. Very much the equivalent of those people who tell you to "man up" or to "cheer up, it might never happen".

But Schulz, it seems, was also having a sly dig at psychiatry's new found popularity. Initially, it comes across as a rare misstep but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, based on the overwhelming evidence that elsewhere he'd been incredibly sensitive towards the frailties of the human psyche, and suggesting he was merely looking to knock pseudoscience rather than 'shrink culture' in its entirety.

If he did mean to throw shade on the entire profession of psychiatry the feeling was certainly not mutual. Many psychiatrists used Peanuts strips and scenarios to demonstrate their theories and, in 1955, the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott asked for permission to use Linus's blanket as an illustration of a 'transitional object'. Something that is used to both protect one's self from, and to transcend, the world with.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1958)

David Musgrave - Animal (1998)

While the children of Peanuts seem to be emotionally hemmed in, if not crippled, by their very humanity, the animals are free. Free to dream, and maybe it's that dreaming that made Snoopy, rather than Charlie Brown, the most iconic image of the whole Peanuts universe. In fact, short of Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, perhaps one of the most iconic animated figures ever to have been created.  

David Musgrave's 1998 work reminds us that Snoopy was a dog but it seems, at times, we weren't content with this. Not only was Snoopy being suggested as a potential president but he was also going into space. In the cartoon strip, his adventures would be well beyond the executive function of your average beagle - but outside of Peanuts, Snoopy's life, and fame, was turbocharged.

Snoopy's free-thinking and unconventional ways made him something of a counter-cultural icon (and like many in the counter-culture that was soon monetised to an obscene degree). In the early days of the Vietnam War, Schulz allowed for Snoopy to become an emblem of the US Army, he gave his name to strategic fortifications and bunkers and even an operation (Operation Snoopy) to locate hidden enemies using airborne chemicals that could detect human sweat. The image of Snoopy appeared on fighter planes, missiles, banners, patches, helmets, and Zippo lighters. It seems likely that, of the over 50,000 US troops who died in the war, a reasonable number would have perished with the image of a seemingly harmless beagle etched into their retinae.

Des Hughes - Snoopy Banner (2015)

KAWS - NO ONE'S HOME, STAY STEADY, THE THINGS THAT COMFORT (2015)

The Vietnam War and the moon landings were probably the nadir and the zenith of the American experience of the sixties but there were other things going on too. Things that surely resonate with us even more today. Things like the civil rights movement and the beginnings of a deeper popular understanding of the structural roots of societal and institutional racism and sexism.

Schulz, by now you'll not be surprised to read, was ahead of the game here too. In 1968 the first black character turned up in Peanuts. Franklin, for that was his name, was also the first black character in any mainstream American comic. Schulz addressed racial inequality by having Franklin's father serving in Vietnam while Charlie Brown's dad continued to work as a barber. Cruel, really, for a prematurely balding child.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1968)

But I don't remember Franklin from watching Charlie Brown cartoons on telly as a kid so was he whitewashed out or did he just not feature that heavily in the first place? Can't lay blame at Schulz's door for the former but, if it's the latter, then, sadly, that looks like tokenism with the lofty benefit of hindsight.

There's far more scope to assess Schulz's portrayal of his female characters. Lucy van Pelt may have been seen as a cruel and unsympathetic 'fussbudget' at the time (especially through my male eyes) but she's actually a forebear of the strong independent women that all but the most chauvinistic of throwbacks now appreciate. She's not always nice but nor are the guys. Personally, I like it when people are nice but I don't think it's something that should be determined by gender.

Charlie's love for the "little red-haired girl" (based on Donna Mae Johnson who turned down a marriage proposal by Schulz) is never reciprocated and, perhaps problematically, she's not given a name and only ever made two screen appearances. But, because of Marcie and Peppermint Patty, I shall, again, give Schulz the benefit of the doubt and conclude that the lack of name and screen time is a reflection of the fact that Charlie Brown doesn't really know her at all. You can't really be in love with someone you don't know. That's just lust. Or, in the case of these children, hopefully infatuation.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1966)

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1966)

But, as the curators of Good Grief:Charlie Brown, tell us (not incorrectly) Schulz's female characters were "confident, complex, headstrong and opinionated". Female readers took Lucy to heart as a woman who'd not be silenced by men, Peppermint Patty became a feminist icon by dint of being better at sport than the boys and eschewing dresses in favour of ill fitting t-shirts, and Marcie was defined far more by her intelligence and questioning nature than her looks.

Oddly it was Lucy, rather than Marcie, who become a totemic figurehead for the 90s Riot Grrrl scene on the West Coast of the US and bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy. A belief took hold that Marcie and Peppermint Patty were an item. Other than them being children you can see why. They looked right. But, of course, in the strip Patty had a thing for Charlie who, as we've established, only had eyes for a particular red haired girl. If Charlie was unlucky in love so too was Patty - and Patty had it tough in other ways. She lived in a one parent family in a rough part of town and this gave her a social conscience, or she just had one anyone - there's always that, that saw her speak up for the weak and the bullied.

It'd be a stretch (for me) to accept that the social conscience Schulz gave Patty came from his own devout Christian upbringing. He'd probably not have accepted it either. In later life he described himself as 'secular humanist' and in one thread of the ever unfolding story he gave organised religion a gentle ribbing with the invention of the Great Pumpkin. Each Hallowe'en, Linus would wait in the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin to arrive with presents and each Hallowe'en, Linus (the only believer in this bizarre cult/religion) would end up disappointed.

These in-jokes, more grown up than us children readers could have understood, helped to make readers feel more comfortable whilst at the same time giving them a template to question the accepted knowledge that had been handed down by society and parents. Together with the combination of broadly sketched characters with complex interior lives, the adult world of its 'mwah-mwah' voices, and, let's not forget, a great soundtrack by Vince 'Dr Funk' Guaraldi it all made up for a hugely successful formula loved by kids worldwide.

But not one, for the most part, that was seen as high art or serious. Something, it seems, that frustrated Schulz. As if to prove he was worthy of the greats he referenced literary classics like Tolstoy's War and Peace and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland into his strips and complained that cartooning was viewed as being "one notch below vaudeville or burlesque as the lowest form of entertainment there is". He'd even have Charlie and Linus play out his inner concerns within the comic.

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts (1962)

It seems less like he was looking to find a place where distinctions between low and high art were blurred, and more elevate the art of the comic strip to that of Tolstoy (he considered War and Peace the greatest novel ever) and Beethoven (witness Schroeder and his preference for Ludwig van over Lucy van), and some of the greatest painters that ever lived. Snoopy had a Van Gogh in his kennel. Of course he did.

So, it's a pity that most of the modern art in the exhibition falls a bit short. Francois Curlet's flag and peanut stand has a sense of both the pathos and the bathos that you get with a Peanuts strip, David Musgrave and KAWS made reasonable observations about the cult of Snoopy, but the works of Helen Marten (a badly drawn shoe, a Toby Jug, and a hieroglyph), Andy Holden (Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will is a series of painted bowls and melting old 78s incorporating Charlie Brown motifs all bundled together under a title borrowed by Gramsci - but I don't know why), and Mira Calix's 'if or unless?' were all pretty much instantly forgettable. Subsumed beneath the far superior, and not inconsiderable, original work.

Des Hughes' Good Grief was only really noteworthy because of the sheer amount of time that had gone into it (it's a cross-stitch) but the end result didn't warrant much attention, sadly. Neither did two rooms showing films by Holden (again) and Fiona Banner. Holden's was an hour long and I'd already been there long enough that time was running out. It did, though, contain a few beds (Snoopy duvets, obvs) and, by this point, they were starting to look pretty comfy.

Des Hughes - Good Grief (2018)

Peanuts Sweatshirts (c.1960s)

A grown man (sort of) sleeping beneath a Snoopy duvet in an art gallery on the grounds of Somerset House may have upset the children so I ploughed on past the merchandise (you can't buy the vintage books or sweatshirts but there was plenty of tat available for those that wanted it) into the final room where you can have your picture taken in Lucy's psychiatric booth (I did of course) and respond to artist Marcus Coates's request to write your own 'life questions' and stick them on the wall.

Normally, these kind of things at the end of exhibition are an excuse for people to write a load of pretentious twaddle, draw a cock, or write how pretentious and shit the exhibition was. Clearly, people were leaving Good Grief:Charlie Brown a lot more inspired than that. Not only were the drawings far better than I could manage (though most are) but the 'life questions' were great too. They ranged from 'Why are we here?' to 'Why is my beard ginger?', from 'Is it better loving someone or being in love with someone?' to 'How can I afford to live in London after I finish university (I am worried about being homeless)?'. 

Some were more statements than questions. 'Don't talk to me' or 'It was a dark and stormy night. Then came Brexit. It got darker and stormier!'. Best of all was a rather lovely, if somewhat soppy, 'Happiness is an exhibition all about Peanuts', dotted with hearts, and signed off by a '61yr old Peppermint Patty'.

That gives you an idea of how much, and for how long, these characters have been part of our lives and how much they mean to us. Truth be told, I was always more of a casual fan (no Joe Cool air freshener in the car for me) than a hardcore one - but, on a Friday afternoon in Somerset House, I spent some time getting to know these characters that have always been there in the background a bit better and, you know what, I came away liking them a bit more. Funny that.

I'll leave the final words to Schulz himself, not least because they seem like a good mantra for our uncertain times - "I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time".