First Impressions: Rude Britannia

Charlotte Crow and Sheila Corr, deputy and picture editors at History Today, give their first impressions of Tate Britain's latest exhibition.

Charlotte Crow:

Is there such thing as a British sense of humour? The TV show Britain’s Got Talent has addressed that question in more ways than one. If you have giggled at the contradiction between that programme’s title and anything you might have seen of its content, you will be both amused and impressed by 'Rude Britannia'. Tate Britain’s dynamic celebration of British comic art spans the 17th-century to the present and explores the serious interface between humour and issues of identity (and much else besides) with a fitting lightness of touch.

An inspired move is the involvement of guest curators Gerald Scarfe, Harry Hill, Steve Bell and Viz Magazine who bring celebrity to proceedings (in a good way), as well as their own distinct artistic contributions. For example, in a room devoted to social satire, dominated by an enormous three-dimensional Viz Magazine, that comic’s love-to-hate character Roger Mellie ‘The Man on the Telly’ appears in a parallel storyboard offering facetious commentary to each scene in Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress. To enter a Sitting Room, where visitors can sit comfortably to peruse cartoon and comic books at close quarters, you must go through the bandy legs of a giant William Pitt, Gerald Scarfe’s take on James Gillray’s The Giant Factotum Amusing Himself (1797).

What this exhibition achieves most successfully, in galleries which explore themes ranging from politics, to social satire, the grotesque, the bawdy and the absurd, is the juxtaposition of historic works with contemporary material so that both can be viewed in fresh ways. Hopefully this imaginative presentation will awaken a new generation to the roots of one of Britain’s genuine talents: the art of irreverence.

Sheila Corr:

Vibrant, witty, colourful and often, as it claims, extraordinarily rude, this exhibition celebrates the role of humour in British visual culture from the 17th century to the present day. What a joy to see a major gallery devote space to this subject which allows for the use of plenty of three-dimensional objects and other large pieces such as Cruikshank’s Worship of Bacchus.

Tate curators have been ably assisted by guest contributors who offer their own unique insights into the exhibits. While this is undoubtedly a refreshing view, explanatory captions could provide some helpful historical background, especially in the 'Politics' section where a person’s ‘tab of identity’ (as Low apparently called it) has to carry the whole story behind some of Gillray’s most vitriolic outbursts.

Most of the historical threads are familiar to me, from broadsides of Cromwell through the work of Hogarth and Patch, and the technological advances in printing which took caricature from the popular Macaronis to the mass market in Punch and comic publications of today. But I was also delighted to discover unknown work such as John Collier’s painting The Hypocrite and the mid-19th-century publication The Penny Satirist.

Self evidently though, the loud and vulgar will draw in the greatest crowds and, while surprised yet again with the explicit nature of the earliest examples in 'The Bawdy' section, I was most amused by the time-warp caption labels for McGill’s saucy seaside postcards of the 1950s stating ‘Original postcard attached to Director of Public Prosecution’s index card’.

Images:

- James Gillray, The Giant Factotum Amusing Himself (1797)

- Shaun Doyle, and Mally Mallinson, Death to the Fascist Fruit Boys (2010)

- Anonymous, Napoleon chamber pot, early 19th century

First Impressions: Moliere or The League of Hypocrites

by Kathryn Hadley

Moliere or The League of Hypocrites opened at the Finborough Theatre last week. Written by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940), in 1931, under the Stalinist regime, the play recalls Molière’s fight to keep his integrity during the reign of Louis XIV when his plays were viewed by the Church and court authorities as increasingly subversive. It provides fascinating insights into both the life of Jean-Baptiste Molière (1622-1673) in 17th-century France and the Stalinist regime, of which Bulgakov was a victim.

The play is framed by two scenes in which the ‘scribbler’ records the events of the days on which the play begins and ends. He marks both days ‘with a black cross’. On the first day marked with a black cross, in 1662, Molière marries Armande Béjart, who is significantly younger than him and whom he believes to be his lover Madeleine’s sister. However, Armande was rumoured to be Madeleine’s daughter and the marriage is in the end one of the causes of Molière’s downfall. The play ends, in 1673, on another day marked with a ‘black cross’: the day of Molière’s death during his performance of Le Malade Imaginaire.

Bulgakov’s play provides, first of all, an intriguing insight into the life of one of the most famous French playwrights and the court of Louis XIV. This particular period of French history is vividly brought to life by the excellent staging, costumes, choreography and performances. The hypocrisy and extensiveness of the court is subtly highlighted, for example, by the identical masks worn by the women at Louis XIV’s court. The staging of the last scene, during which Molière’s company perform Le Malade Imaginaire, is particularly powerful. The actors chant medical formulae in Latin and oppressively dance around the main character Argan, a hypochondriac who imagines himself sick and scrupulously follows all his doctor’s orders, highlighting the arrogance and pedantry of doctors in 17th-century France, a recurring theme in Molière’s plays.

Beyond 17th-century court life, however, the play acts as a mirror of the time during which Bulgakov wrote and provides a deeper insight into the repression of the Stalinist regime. The story of the attack mounted against Molière’s Tartuffe following its premiere in 1664 hints at similar censorship in Soviet Russia. The play, which mocks a hypocritical priest and his dupes, was viewed as an attack on the Church. The Archbishop of Paris issued a statement excommunicating anyone who performed, watched or even read the play. The play itself was banned.

In a particularly dark and terrifying scene set in the crypt of church, hooded monks from the ‘League of the Holy Writ’ interrogate Zacharie Moirron forcing him to confess that Molière is married to his lover’s daughter, Armande Béjart. In the words of Jean-Jacques Bouton, the theatre factotum, the members of the league ‘take no account of the law so we must be prepared for anything’. Numerous references are made to the dangers of losing the king’s favour and a later scene, during which Moirron is interrogated by the king himself, is a further allusion to the torture and interrogations of the Stalinist era. When Moirron asks what he should do now that he has been banished from Moliere’s theatre company, the king suggests that he might ‘enter the royal service and work for the secret police’.

Bulgakov wrote at the time of the Great Terror in Russia. His plays were gradually banned and he found himself unemployable. His situation at the end of his life closely resembles that of Molière, who is portrayed as a broken man. Molière is old, has a ‘weak heart’ (he was in reality suffering from tuberculosis), has been deprived of the king’s patronage, his wife has left him and his lover is dead.

Excellently staged and performed in this production directed by Blanche McIntyre, a powerful and thought provoking play, which has forced me to reconsider my choice of the best history play of the year for our advent calendar of the top history moments of 2009!

Moliere or the League of Hypocrites
Until December 19th
Finborough Theatre
118 Finborough Road
London SW10 9ED
Telephone: 020 7244 7439
http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/

Photos (by Sheryl Tait):

- Justin Avoth as Molière

- court scene with Gyuri Sarossy as Louis XIV

First Impressions: Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the V&A

by Charlotte Crow,

After seven years in development, the £31.75 million new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum open to the public this Wednesday. A full fanfare deserves to be sounded.

At the press view this morning there was still protective polythene in evidence, altar pieces were being vacuumed and capitals lowered into place atop pillars. But these finishing touches did not detract from the visual and spatial impact of the ten galleries which span 300 AD to 1600. On display are some of the most beautiful works of European art and craftsmanship of the period and although aesthetically the objects speak for themselves, their appreciation is unquestionably enhanced by this creative overhaul.

The architects in charge of the reconfiguration of the original 1909 galleries, MUMA (McInnes Usher McKnight Architects), have also been responsible for the design and this, together with a close curatorial input, helps to explain the successful cohesion of the project. Large-scale architectural pieces, many of which have not been seen for decades or more, are integrated within the gallery scheme; one can take a view from an Italian stone balcony, walk through a vast marble choir screen from the Netherlands and examine from all angles a three-storey wooden spiral staircase from Morlaix in Brittany dating from the 1520s.

The overwhelming impression is of light and breathing space for objects large and small. The design is confident and contemporary without being self conscious or intrusive. I especially liked the onyx window screens in the lower galleries, inspired by medieval alabaster, which delicately filter natural light behind the brilliant stained glass, and the artefact labels of beaten ‘gold-leaf’.

The galleries, which have been funded by £20 million of private donations and a £9.75 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, are arranged broadly chronologically but also thematically, enabling the exhibits to shine a broader light on the times and allowing artefacts from different places to sit alongside each other. The famous enamel Becket Casket, made within twenty years of Becket’s murder in Limoges and believed to have held his relics, is displayed close to a 12th-century church-shaped metalwork and ivory tabernacle from Cologne in the section ‘Faiths and Empires 300-1250’. In ‘Devotion and Display 1300-1500’ religious celebration is explored through works of art commissioned by civic groups as well as by individuals. Here stained glass window panels commissioned by Bishop William of Wykeham for Winchester College c.1393, are shown alongside fragments of Giovanni Pisano’s late 13th-century sculpture of the prophet Haggai, which once graced the façade of Siena cathedral.

There is too much to see in one visit, but this is somewhere I will look forward to returning to linger over the treasures and dig deeper into the layers of interpretation on offer.

Images:

- detail of the Troy tapestry

- the Becket casket