Ad Summa Nitamur Pt.II

This blog will be much shorter, and with far fewer photos (some thanks to Pam, some thanks to stealing them from the Internet), than my standard LbF walk. That's because last Saturday's second walk to celebrate Croydon being this year's London borough of culture was a lot shorter than planned and, to be honest, it was mostly along residential roads.

That's not to say it was a bad day. It certainly wasn't. But, in retrospect, to arrange a walk that takes in a hill called Breakneck Hill on one of the hottest days of the year was possibly not the wisest decision. Some didn't struggle. Others did.

The walk nearly didn't happen. It was only towards the end of the week that anybody confirmed their attendance and so it was I found myself travelling from Honor Oak Park, via Norwood Junction, to Coulsdown Town station that morning. I was in a bit of a rush. I didn't even pick up a Guardian and my phone barely had any charge. One of the reasons I, personally, didn't take any photos.

When I arrived at The Valley Cafe, a venue previously used by Shep and myself on the London LOOP, I found Pam already there and it wasn't long before Mo and Katie joined us. I took beans on toast and a lemonade which I struggled with. I occasionally get this horrid acid reflux thing which makes me gag and sometimes even puke. In retrospect the beans (in tomato sauce) and lemonade (a fizzy drink) was a pretty stupid idea. I'll try and avoid them in the future if I'm suffering with reflux. You live and learn - or at least you're supposed to!

 

Leaving the cafe, we headed along the B2032 which soon became the A23 - lined with mock Tudor family homes - and passed through on a fairly recent TADS walk. Just before Reedham station we turned off, crossed under the railway lines, and eventually made our way to Bencombe Road. Phew, that was a steep one for a hot day.

 

Some nice houses though - as there were on most of the next residential roads we passed through:- Higher Drive, Foxley Hill Road, and - near Purley - Godstone Road. Crossing the A22 and still more roads. There's a lot of greenery in Croydon but it is still part of London and there are some stretches that seem like endless suburbia.

Warren Road, Grasmere Road, Riddlesdown Road, Brancaster Lane, Yew Tree Walk, Purley Downs Road, Norman Avenue, and Florence Road brought us to Sanderstead Road and we'd already covered 6k (poor Mo's step counter wasn't working so she was losing vital steps) and the general consensus was it was time to stop for a drink.

 

With no pubs around we instead repaired to the Coco & Nut Coffee for soft drinks. It was nice to sit in the shade for a while and, in fact, we found ourselves sitting in Little Coconuts Corner. Maybe they could have brought drawing books out for us.

We left the coffee shop and continued up Sanderstead Road before turning up another hill and into Croham Hurst Woods where human occupation goes back thousands of years. A Mesolithic settlement once stood there and Neolithic flint tools have been found. All we found was a very very steep hill. The clue was in the name - Breakneck Hill.

Covered in loose scree, there was also danger of slippage but luckily we all made it to the top in one piece. The ladies took the bench but I just led on my back. I was drenched in sweat by this point but at least we'd reached the top. I didn't feel in the mood to read any history out but if I did I could have told the others that this land was once owned by John Whitgift. the Archbishop of Cantebury from 1583 to 1604 and that Whitgift had been a master of philosopher Francis Bacon at Cambridge.

Instead we headed back down. I'd intended to take us past the Russell School (notable alumni:- Martin Clunes, Elly Jackson (La Roux), and Belouis Some) but instead we headed for the edge of the beautiful and expansive Lloyd Park where such bands as The Damned, The Lightning Seeds, Martha and the Vandellas, and The Proclaimers have played. I'd even seen that Proclaimers gig.

We didn't go into the park but instead went straight to the Coombe Lodge Beefeater to cool down and get a drink. A Beefeater doesn't sound too promising but once we'd crossed a very busy road - thanks to a kind motorist waving us over - we found it to be most agreeable. Pam and I had pints, Mo and Katie soft drinks and we sat inside chatting and putting the world to right as an 80th birthday party kicked off in a pleasant looking, check floored, function room.

After two drinks, Katie shot off (she leads a busy life that one) and me, Pam, and Mo moved to the beer garden for one more before leaving the pub, grabbing a 99 from an ice cream van (one that insisted that 99 was the name of the flake and not the ice cream), and jumping a tram into East Croydon.

From there it was into the BOXPARK for food. To the sounds of Aaliyah and Jay-Z, Pam and I had Pakistani street food and Mo had a pizza and we had a couple more drinks. I'd meant to include different pubs and visit South Norwood Country Park (still never been) but sometimes you have to read the room and, to be honest, I was happy to quit while we were - just - ahead.

It wasn't exactly the Croydon walk I'd planned - but it was (perhaps) the Croydon walk I needed. I'd notched up 18,545 steps by the end of the day which was far from a record but it's not about the numbers and, anyway, it felt a lot more. In some ways, I think spending a couple of hours in the BOXPARK is probably a fairly authentic way to celebrate Croydon and though we didn't get to throw any axes (you're not allowed to if you've been drinking but I'd have not had the energy for it anyway and Pam had recently sated her desire for axe throwing up in Edinburgh) but we'd seen two very different sides to Croydon in one day. Ad Summa Nitamur means 'let us strive after perfection' and we certainly did. We may not have achieved perfection (who does?) but we certainly strived. Normal service will be resumed, hopefully, next time. Thanks to Pam, Mo, and Katie for joining me.

A Hot Flush:The Change.

When Linda, who's just turned fifty, visits her doctor (a nice cameo from Richard Durden) worrying she may have early onset dementia she describes how she's feeling in some detail and finds out, the name of the show's quite a big clue, she's going through the menopause.

Channel 4's The Change (written by Bridget Christie who stars as Linda and directed by Al Campbell) isn't, however, only about the menopause. The menopause simply acts as a backdrop for a quirky, gently funny, and often sweet story about women throughout history and their lot. How they've been treated by men, how they've been treated by society, and how they treat each other.

As such, the vast majority of the characters are women and even the soundtrack (Shirley Collins, Karen Dalton) is provided entirely by female artists. This is a series that, quite easily, passes the Bechdel test. On discovering she is menopausal, Linda, a mother of two, decides to use 'the change' to make changes in her life.

She wants to be more than just a mother, more than just a wife, and she doesn't want to have to clear up constantly after men like husband Steve (Omid Djalili) - who tells her, at her own fiftieth birthday party, that she's "well fit ... for your age". Linda, after years of looking after others, wants to put her needs first for once.

So she takes her old Triumph motorbike for a ride through the Forest of Dean with the hope of finding a time capsule in a tree she placed it in when she was a child. The trouble is there are a lot of trees in the Forest of Dean. There are also a lot of characters and it's not long before Linda is, not always by choice, interacting with them.

She meets the eel sisters, Agnes (Susan Lynch) and Carmel (Monica Dolan), whom she hopes to let a "luxury" caravan from. The eel sisters have been "proudly serving eels and mash to men" from a shack in the woods that's been providing that service for over 170 years. 

She meets Tony (Paul Whitehouse) in the local pub. He sits down to join her despite her being upfront about not wanting him to. She meets Joy (Tanya Moodie) who presents a local radio show about feminist issues and she also meets The Verderer (Jim Howick) who does a show on the same station but comes from a very different angle. The Verderer angrily rants about feminism, Africans with AIDS, Woman's Hour, and snowflakes.

You know the type. Then there's Ryan (Sonny Charlton). Ryan serves in the cafe the radio station broadcasts from and is gender neutral. Quite surprisingly, he turns out to be The Verderer's nephew. Then there's Jerome Flynn (yes that one) as a Pig Man who lives in a cave in the woods, looks after boars, and looks like Crocodile Dundee. Linda and Pig Man strike up a moving friendship.

There's plans afoot to build a road through the forest and that's of concern to many locals but an even bigger issue seems to be the upcoming eel festival and the plan to replace the traditional eel king with an eel queen. Linda doesn't quite let on exactly who she is to the locals but that's made difficult by the fact her no nonsense sister Siobhain (Liza Tarbuck) keeps ringing her and shouting at her for abandoning her family.

But Linda isn't ready to return just yet. For years she's made a list of every chore she's carried out and how much time each one took out of her life and she is determined to claw at least a small percentage of that time back. So Townmouse (as the eel sisters take to calling her) spends her time having quiet pints in the local pub, reading Simone De Beauvoir and Kate Muir, and trying to find both the fabled tree and the historical time capsule.

There's a nice folkloric vibe to the whole thing and there's some decent jokes in there too. The Incredible Hulk, announces Linda, is the only menopausal role model in the history of television and film, a discussion about a sheep made of cheese, The Verderer citing the reason for food poverty being that poor people spend their money on "fags and gnomes", and a cat speed dating event.

There's a good Ant'n'Dec joke, another good one about death by auto-asphyxiation (!), and when Tony feigns concern about Linda sitting alone in a pub he lists places where women may be in danger of being raped:- "hot air balloon, ghost train, in space". There's also a remembrance of a long ago local contest to find the local man with the biggest willy - and what he was then demanded to do with that willy.

So it's pretty silly in places, dark in others. More than that it's sweet and even quite touching. Bridget Christie has managed to make a comedy about menopausal women and women in general that is neither patronising nor preachy. That made a change.

 

Metronomic Overground:Sarah Sze @ Peckham Rye station.

"Everybody's moving, moving, moving, moving. Please don't leave me to remain" - Waiting Room, Fugazi.

 

Who knew? I've lived within half an hour's walk of Peckham Rye station for twenty-seven years. I've used the station hundreds of times. I've walked past it thousands of times. It's a vibrant area. You've got your standard Rye Lane phone repair shops, vegan eateries, charity shops, Frank's Campari bar (best views of London), the quirky John the Unicorn pub, Khan's Bazaar, the Peckham Levels, Peckhamplex, and the hugely underrated Il Giardino restaurant.

The station itself is fairly quotidian. It's a place to travel to and a place to travel from. It's not a destination in and of itself. But, unknown to me and almost everyone else, there's a rather large and previously unused billiards room up a couple of flights of stairs near the entrance and it is there that Boston's Sarah Sze was hosting her exhibition The Waiting Room.

One that had received warm praise and one, sadly, that didn't really deserve that warm praise. Under the aegis of Artangel, who are normally excellent, Sze's filled the room with screens of all shapes and sizes. As you sit on a wooden chair, or pace round the room, looking at them, a metronomic beat ticks away. Tick tick tick.

Like a bomb waiting to explode. But the bomb never does explode. You just look at screens - and on those screens very little is happening. There are even projections on the walls round the back of the screens and though they're larger and a little more impressive, it's still a case of nothing happening in real time.

The most interesting thing is probably the leaflet you pick up from a friendly invigilator on entering the gallery. It tells of the waiting room/billiards room being opened in 1865 and it tells of the fact that, on average, five billion photographs are taken on mobile phones everyday. Many of them, presumably, far more interesting than the ones Sze has included in her work.

The leaflet talks about Sze's interest in how time and space are speeding up but, again, you could probably get an AI chatbot to make this work and it would be more, not less, interesting. I stayed for a while to see if anything happened. It didn't. So I left. I walked down Rye Lane and popped into Greggs where I bought a vegan sausage roll, a glazed ring doughnut, a packet of prawn cocktail crisps, and a pink lemonade. Later that evening I took ketamine for the first time ever. Now that WAS an experience.

Anarchist Humanism:Alice Neel @ the Barbican.

"All my life I wanted to do a nude self-portrait, but I put it off till now when people would accuse me of insanity rather than vanity" - Alice Neel

Self-Portrait (1980)

A nude portrait of a woman in her mid-seventies. What a way to start a show. It says something about Alice Neel that she waited until that age until she 'dared' paint herself naked but it also says something about the Barbican and the way they're telling the story of her life and her career in their Alice Neel:Hot Off The Griddle show.

Back in July 2017 I visited a (free) Alice Neel retrospective at the Victoria Miro Gallery - and I wrote about it too. There will, no doubt, be some repetition her and, most likely, there will be some contradiction too but the Barbican's (paying) show was considerably more extensive than the Victoria Miro one. If equally fascinating.

Born on the 28th January 1900, Neel liked to say she was just four weeks younger than the century. She described herself as having "hypersensitivity and the will of the devil" and these attributes, she felt, were key to being a good artist. If not, initially, a successful one. Neel worked in portraiture, mostly in New York, at a time when abstraction was all the rage.

Since her death in 1984, her work has been reappraised and she has been dubbed 'the court painter of the underground' for her vivid portraits of people who were, during her lifetime, often considered to be leading marginal existences. Operating on the perimeter of mainstream life. Rarely painted.

The Barbican's journey begins in Havana, Cuba where Neel and her husband, the Cuban artist Carlos Enrique Gomez, moved after getting married in 1925. It was her first trip abroad, having grown up in small town Pennsylvania, and she was profoundly struck by the light and colours of the Caribbean. She became a mother, to Santillana del Mar, in 1926 but still found plenty of time to paint. Her husband and an unnamed French Girl may have been typical subject matter but Neel also painted beggars she saw on the street. Already, she was looking around her and refusing to ignore the truth in her work.

French Girl (1920s)

Carlos Enriquez (1926)

Beggars, Havana, Cuba (1926)

Back in New York's Greenwich Village in the 1930s, Neel had a nervous breakdown and spent time in psychiatric hospitals. As she put it herself:- "I didn't do anything but fall apart and go to pieces". Santillana had died of diptheria at just eleven months old and Enriquez had taken their second daughter, Isabetta, back to Cuba to live with his family.

The pain Neel must have undergone would have been unbearable, unimaginable, and the only way out of it turned out to be by consuming herself with her art. From now on, Neel would be a singular artist. She would do things her way.

She fell  into the beatnik scene and made images that some would have found scandalous. Not least Joe Gould and his friends with their todgers out, sometimes multiple todgers. Bronx Bacchus appears to have a very long, thin, one and Ethel Ashton's not leaving much to the imagination either. She even painted herself having a piss (so the 1980 nude wasn't her first nude self-portrait after all) with her friend John Rothschild keeping up that solid male tradition of urinating into the sink.

Joe Gould (1933)

Bronx Bacchus (1929)

Ethel Ashton (1930)

Christopher Lazare (1932)

Untitled (Alice Neel and John Rothschild in the Bathroom) (1935)

But as Neel came out of her depression, America went into one. A great depression that followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929. As part of his New Deal programme, Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the Public Works of Art Project in 1933 and Neel signed up as soon as possible. She was paid $26.88 a week in return for producing one painting (of an agreed size) every day.

Nude paintings, however, were not accepted So instead Neel took to capturing scenes of New York's adversity. She became so politically involved she was even arrested for picketing. The paintings from this time, like 1933's Cityscape and 1936's Uneeda Biscuit Strike, are rather excellent. Imagine if Lowry visited New York. They're quite beautiful even when they're showing some very worrying times. None more worrying than street protests about the rise of the Nazis.

Cityscape (1933)

Uneeda Biscuit Strike (1936)

Longshoremen, Returning from Work (1936)

Berenice Abbott - 'El', Second and Third Avenue Lines (1936)

Nazis Murder Jews (1936)

While the world was going to shit, Neel's life was picking up. She'd met the Puerto Rican nightclub singer Jose Negron and they'd moved to Spanish Harlem together. Into a 'tremendous' apartment with ample studio space and, crucially, light for Neel to work. But, in what is starting to look like a pattern, Jose left Neel when their son Richard was only three months old.

Neel stayed in the area and stayed friendly with his family. "I love you Harlem", Neel wrote in her diary, "for the rich deep vein of human feeling buried under your fire engines". Finding herself now in a financially precarious system, she identified with the strivers and the hustle of the neighbourhood and painted those that lived there with a sense of empathy rather than sympathy. Some of the faces are haunted by the grim reality of their life, others are resistant, others still exuberant and buoyant. All, of course, feel very real.

Puerto Rico Libre! (1936)

A Quiet Summer's Day (c.1963)

Spanish Party (1939)

Black Spanish-American Family (1950)

The Spanish Family (1943)

As well as locals from her neighbourhood, Neel began to paint people she admired for their political commitments. These included the Marxist filmmaker Sam Brody (who became her partner and father of her son, Hartley) and the communist intellectual Harold Cruse. She considered, at the height of abstraction, portraiture to be a political act. She had no issue with abstract art but she didn't want to remove 'man' from art. Above all else, she was a lover of humanity.

Neel had joined the Communist Party as early as 1935 but post-war, the Cold War had introduced a feverish anxiety into American society and anyone with left wing politics was deemed suspicious. A situation that sadly continues to this day. Neel was investigated by the FBI whose files describe her, not unfairly, as " romantic Bohemian type communist". When two agents arrived to interview her in 1955, she asked if they'd like her to paint them. They politely declined.

Neel kept an image of Lenin on her kitchen wall until the end of her life and liked to describe herself as an 'anarchic humanist'. It seems a pretty good description of her work. Tender human portraits side by side with rowdy protests and wakes for deceased feminist campaigners. Neel saw the world as it was and not how she wanted it to be.

Mercedes Arroyo (1952)

Horace Cayton (1949)

Harold Cruse (c.1950)

Save Willie McGee (c.1950)

Death of Mother Bloor (c.1951)

Rita and Hubert (1954)

Which, of course, can sometimes make life difficult. In 1958,. she began to see a therapist for the first time. Dr Anthony Sterrett encouraged her to be even more ambitious in her work. She plucked up the courage to ask Frank O'Hara (then a curator at the Museum of Modern Art) to sit for her and soon she started to become reasonably well known. As she put it, she finally got before the world.

Social justice movements and second wave feminism were in the air and Neel was already ahead of the game. Critics described her work as 'extraordinarily alive', said her paintings 'cast a spell', and she even got a recently shot Andy Warhol to sit for her in a none too flattering portrait. She was on a roll. Her work from this era is bolder, freer, more colourful, more expressive. It's almost as if she's enjoying herself.

Frank O'Hara (1960)

Mother and Child (1962)

Wellesley Girls (1967)

Pregnant Julie and Algis (1967)

Ruth Nude (1964)

Black Draftee (James Hunter) (1965)

Andy Warhol (1970)

Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis) (1972)

Geoffrey Hendricks and Brian (1978)

Cindy Nemser and Chuck (1975)

 Gus Hall (1981)

Neel told an interviewer that her paintings were 'reckless' but I reckon she said that with her tongue firmly in her cheek. Her paintings, by this time, had agency and Neel herself had agency. That meant that her sitters, be they Marxists like Irene Peslikis or gay couples like Geoffrey Hendricks and Brian, had agency too. Andy Warhol aside, you get the feeling these people enjoyed being painted by Neel. She did them proud not by flattery but by truth.

In fact, Neel claimed to not even know what flattery was. She quoted Keats:- "beauty is truth, truth beauty". In 1981 she became the first living artist to have a retrospective in the USSR and even into her eighties she continued to paint those she admired and those that society sometimes shunned. Like performance artist and sex activist Annie Sprinkle. 

Alice Neel loved life and she loved people. She held strong political beliefs because she loved life and she loved people and she wanted the best for everyone. Even, eventually, herself. In her final years she would ring friends out of the blue and simply say to them "guess what? I'm alive". She was too - and so were her paintings.

Annie Sprinkle (1982)