A reminder of just how good television can be

Certainly not brutal on the mind

Television used to be at the heart of home life: the large box on legs in the corner of the living room around which the family grouped after homework and the evening meal.

That was in the good old days, when there were just three terrestrial channels and, in our household at least, ITV was almost beyond the pale, except for Saturday afternoon wrestling and when my father wanted to get sentimental over This Is Your Life.

Childhood memories are seasoned with TV programmes and their theme tunes. Strangely enough for such a Europhobic home, foreign-language programmes left abiding memories of childhood: Belle and Sebastian, Robinson Crusoe (the never-ending, black and white French version, with the beautifully evocative and short opening), The Flashing Blade and White Horses.

And then, of course, there was Blue Peter – you can measure your age by the earliest presenters you can remember – Vision On, and Animal Magic (I blame Johnny Morris for a propensity to voice my cats).

There were also the cartoons – the first programme I saw in colour was Top Cat, to be astonished that his waistcoat was purple and his fur yellow.

Later, there were all the cop shows from the States.

Catching some recent repeats of Kojak has reminded me how good this was was. But I loved Harry O too (already a world-weary cynic) and, of course, since I am of a generation, Starsky and Hutch. Later still, there was Cagney and Lacey, which beat the homegrown Juliet Bravo into a cocked hat and which my mother also loved but my father detested.

Some years ago, when she was playing Annie Wilkes in a stage version of Stephen King’s Misery, I got the chance to meet Sharon Gless and, among other things in a wonderful conversation, thank her for what Cagney and Lacey meant to me and, I’m sure, many other young women.

Somehow one never felt quite the same attachment to the likes of Dixon of Dock Green, Softly Softly and Z Cars, although I remember them all. But there was always a sense that they had more to my parents’ generation and rather less mine.

Oh indeedy: the US crime shows of the ’70s and  early ’80s rocked: who loves ya, baby?

That’s not to say that there were not plenty of British dramas that also form part of that patchwork of televisual memories that seem to possess such a powerful sense of time and place.

All Creatures Great and Small, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Maybury, those BBC Shakespeares, I, Claudius: later, there were joys to discover in the utterly superb Singing Detective, and the likes of Boys from the Blackstuff …

Theo Kojak: grittier and 100% sexier than Dixon

Comedy too: Morecambe and Wise of course, Porridge and Dad’s Army: my paternal grandfather served in the Home Guard (I get my myopia from him) and would chuckle merrily at Jimmy Perry and David Croft’s timeless comedy, observing that it was incredibly accurate.

One could be forgiven for assuming that the vast increase in available channels would have meant even more good telly, but the opposite seems to have been the case.

The drive for viewing figures means TV executives and programme makers playing inevitably to the lowest common denominator.

Thus Big Brother, in proving such a ratings hit – and one that could also generate money by persuading viewers to invest their hard-earned in phone votes – has spawned countless further ‘reality’ TV where the only reality is a lack of quality and similar money-making ruses.

And each passing year demands, of such series, further sensation to fill the pages of a media that is increasingly voracious in its need for the sort of page-filling non-news that has increasingly eased out the inconvenient real news.

In a televisual sense at least, there are, of course, exceptions.

In the US there has been, in recent years, a real blossoming of TV drama – not exclusively but not least at HBO.

Deadwood, The Sopranos, The West Wing, Broadwalk Empire and so forth. I’d go so far as to suggest that certainly the extensive use of multi-season story arcs was kicked off by Babylon 5 (1993-98), which had moments of hitting quite classically dramatic heights and has had an influence that has gone well beyond any genre and beyond what people might like to suppose.

It's worth watching in its own right too – right from the beginning, at least until the end of season four.

In terms of home-grown TV entertainment, there are occasional bright spots: it might not please the purists, but the reincarnated Dr Who continues to look good as entertainment that doesn't actually insult the mind – not least when compared with the rest of the schedules – while Sherlock has been an absolute delight and, on the comedy front, The Thick of It is utter genius and at least all those retro channels allow us frequent repeats of Blackadder, which, the more we move from  on from the time of creation, the more we realise just how good it was.

But it’s rare for me at least to get excited about something on the box in the corner – a box that is no longer a box but a flat panel.

However, just as you might imagine that this post is going to be all negative, we come to the unexpected – because television excitement is precisely what I have felt over the last eight days and, with catch-up TV, it’s worth mentioning because, if you missed it, you can still catch up.

Well hello, Officer Dibble

Stuck away in the BBC’s ghetto for the sort of ‘serious’ programming that used to occupy BBC2 until it was hived off into the digital realm of BBC Knowledge, and which subsequently became BBC4, there is a season of programmes on architecture.

Which is worth mentioning in its own right.

But part of this has been, in two parts, another television essay by Jonathan Meades: this time, on Bonkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness: Concrete Poetry.

There is style here, but no shortage of substance. Indeed, you may well find yourself wanting to rewatch these programmes, so thick and fast fly the ideas and the information.

You don’t have to agree with Meades all the time to appreciate him – not least, to appreciate that he neither talks down to anyone nor dumbs down his arguments.

You may find yourself looking up a word or two in the dictionary or even Googling the name of an architect that you haven’t heard of before – I certainly do – but how much better is that than the mind-numbing inanity of Britain’s Got Whatever?

These are not documentaries, mind, and so rarely do we get anything like this to watch that you have to remind yourself of that rather obvious point.

They are, however, hugely intelligent, provocative (in the best sense of the word) and the sort of events that wake the little grey cells and makes them dance the fandango from sheer excitement.

There are reasons I watch so little television these days – it no longer forms a centrepiece of my home life. But when it’s as good as this mini Meades series, it makes you long for more.

Catch-up TV can let you see it – even if you missed it.

And as for whether he's right or not about brutalism ... well, that’s the stuff for another post, not least because, in terms of the quality of the programme, it really doesn’t matter.

How grown up is that?

Crumbs, it's another bit of art destruction

This is art – not rubbish

Contemporary art has taken a bit of a bashing this week. First there was the incident of an Ai Waiwai vase being smashed and now it seems that a cleaner at a gallery in Italy has mistaken an exhibit as rubbish and thrown it away.

Works that included pieces of newspaper and cardboard, and biscuit crumbs, as part of the Sala Murat gallery’s display went straight into the bin.

A spokesman for the cleaning firm said that the unnamed cleaner was “just doing her job” and added that his firm’s insurance would cover the costs, which amazingly were cited as being around €10,000 euros (£8,200).

I’d expect an awful lot of paper, cardboard and crumbs for that.

The cleaner had thought that it was rubbish left behind by workers who had been setting up the Mediating Landscape exhibition.

Such has been the cause célèbre that Antonio Maria Vasile, Bari’s ‘marketing commissioner’ felt compelled to comment, apologising and then adding: “But this is all about the artists who have been able to better interpret the meaning of contemporary art, which is to interact with the environment.”

Sniggering is permitted, I think.

Now I know that much contemporary installation art is supposed to act as a form of social comment, but when it’s so esoteric that those not in on the know thinks it’s rubbish – and not just in a critical way – then it begs the question of just who will ‘get it’ and whether it can be said to have a point.

By way of complete contrast, this week has seen the announcement by Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery that more than 123,300 have seen a retrospective of paintings by Jack Vettriano in its 23-week run – making it the museum’s most visited art exhibition there.

Dance Me to the End of Love, Jack Vettriano

Mind, many who would probably enjoy Ai’s vases or an exhibit of paper, cardboard and crumbs would have decidedly snobbish views of Vettriano.

The art establishment really doesn’t like him – probably not helped because he’s popular with the general public and makes a fortune from having his works reproduced on cards and posters.

And of course, that popularity has meant financial success too – although money doesn’t seem to stop the cognoscenti worshipping at the feet of Damien Hirst, which also means that it isn’t a matter of class, since both Hirst and Vettriano are from working-class backgrounds.

Now personally, I think Vettriano is technically excellent, but most of his works do little for me in terms of the subject matter, as they seem locked in a kind of odd, retro fantasy world.

And that’s not just the pictures of pre-1939 scenes.

Olympia, his portrait of Zara Phillips, seems reminiscent of the style of David Hockney’s Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy (1970-71).

Some of his erotic paintings are interesting, but are more than a little clichéd – they have none of the edge, for instance, of Walter Sickert’s Camden Town Nudes.

However, the point is that Vettriano is the opposite of those biscuit crumbs – and those crumbs are the perfect example of what puts people off contemporary art.

With the best will in the world, if you have a comment to make on the nature of the world and you think it’s worth making, why do it in a way that will be understood or appreciated by the smallest number of people possible and, quite possibly with some of them only ‘getting it’ as a pose?

There is a place for installation art – it’s not all bonkers – but why does it seem to have relegated painting, for instance, to the periphery of the contemporary art scene?

Given that art schools have, apparently stopped teaching drawing, perhaps it represents, in general terms, a dumbing down of what might be expected to be high-end art.

Crumbs indeed.

The joke's on Ai

This is art

It's a whole new take on the emperor's new clothes - and a classic case of pretentiousness pricked.

Over in Florida, a row has broken out after an artwork by renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was destroyed.

South Florida artist Maximo Caminero has been charged with criminal mischief after picking up a vase in an exhibition and smashing it.

The piece - reportedly worth $1m - was destroyed.

Caminero has stated that he did it because galleries in the area never exhibit the works of local artists.

This is also art. Not vandalising ancient objects

But why did he smash a vase to make his point?

Well, this is where it all gets a little amusing.

One of the exhibits in the exhibition is Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, a series of three photographs that show Ai dropping a vase and breaking it.

The vase in question was, apparently, some 4,000 years old, which, you could be forgiven for thinking, made it an act of vandalism rather than art.

But somehow the triptych of photographs, which hadn't been planned seriously, came to take on a life of their own and were declared, by the cognoscenti, to be Art.

This Florida exhibition also includes a further series of Han vases, all of which have been painted by Ai. It was one of these that Caminero decided to make his protest with.

Art echoing art, you might think.

But Ai isn't happy.

This is not art

On the one hand, he's said that, since he owned the vase that he smashed, it was his to do with as he wished.

On the other hand, he stated that he didn't support artists destroying other artists' work.

All of which seems a tad confused, since unless Ai is an awful lot older than he's been letting on, he appears to consider it a work of art for him to destroy someone else's work of art.

And those painted vases now worth a cool million greenbacks - all his own work or simply someone else's, to which he has added a few smears of colour?

While ownership might allow him to do whatever he wants with an antique that he owns, isn't there the small ethical matter of profiting directly from someone else's work without properly acknowledging their contribution?

But it does all rather bring to mind Duchamp's urinal.

But whereas that artist's joke was on others, the joke now seems to be on Ai.

Pier without peer

Brighton's West Pier, gouache, February 2014

Pleasure piers are as English as cucumber sandwiches, handkerchiefs on the head and the sound of the Wurlitzer.

Jutting out into inclement seas all around this island, they’re as much an essential feature of our collective culture as the strandkörbe is to Germans.

The first such one was Ryde Pier, on the Isle of Wight, which opened in 1814.

February 2012

In 1823, Brighton got its first one – the Chain Pier – although it was destroyed by a storm in 1896, and the Palace Pier was built a little to the west and opened in 1899.

My own memories of piers include standing at the back of the Morecambe Pier to watch wrestling – and seeing ‘Cry Baby’ Jim Breaks actually get thumped by an elderly woman wielding a brolly.

I sung on the same pier in competition in my school days.

Stencil art on one of the columns, June 2007

And at Blackpool’s South Pier, a friend took me to see Danny La Rue in 1990 – harking back to entertainment that was a thing of the past by then.

And later, there were interludes with The Other Half playing air hockey as competitively as it’s possible, and ‘winning’ a grey rat toy, at the amusement arcades on the same pier as we whiled away the time waiting for a Rugby League cup final at the town’s football ground.

Blackpool is rather greedy on the pier front – it has three, although the town’s North Pier has taken a battering in this winter’s storms.

That on is the oldest and longest – and was intended for a ‘better class’ of holidaymaker.

June 2009

Opened in 1863, it was designed by Eugenious Birch – who designed Brighton’s West Pier, which opened three years later.

It was, however, closed in 1975 for renovation, but that never happened.

There have been plenty of plans to restore it, but two fires, the weather and various other catastrophes have continued apace, with no sign of any such restoration ever taking place.

Detail, June 2009

There are conspiracy theories aplenty about the fires – at least one of which is popularly supposed to have been arson – and many of the plans to restore it were opposed by, among others, the owners of the Palace Pier, who apparently thought that any subsidy for it’s restoration would be unfair competition.

There has been a plan for something called i360 – a futuristic observation tower – with a suggestion that money from this would then be spent on rebuilding the pier itself.

Ballroom dome and seagulls, June 2009

So far, the only thing that has happened is that the West Pier’s slow decline continues.

Storms, as well as a ship crashing into it and three attempts to dynamite it, plus the fires and decades of neglect have seen it gradually fall into the sea. The most recent damage occurred just a fortnight or so ago, when the weather ripped a gaping hole through the main structure, splitting part of it.

It’s difficult to see how much longer the old lady can continue standing.

Rusting support columns, June 2007

And yet she does.

In spite of the tawdry attempts to get rid of her and the broken pledges to restore her to glory, she remains.

She seems determined to defy everything – and has become loved in her own right for what she is today.

January 2014

The structure that still rises from the sea has a melancholy beauty and elegance that makes it the very first thing I look for on visiting Brighton. I’d go so far as to suggest that, stripped back to its iron skeleton allows you to see that elegance far more clearly.

A few years ago, the dome of the ballroom collapsed into the water to be washed by the tides and draped in a gown of seaweed green. Seagulls sat on it and squawked, while thousands of starlings swirl and roost on the structure at sunset.

I’ve been photographing the West Pier ever since my first visit, back in 2007, and this year, I’ve added a pastel and a gouache version to my gallery.

A Moody Brighton Day, soft pastel

She continues to delight – so much more that the Palace Pier that I’ve visited once for a henna tattoo and haven’t bothered with since.

And there’s a certain pleasure in the knowledge that, as she stubbornly refuses to sink beneath the waves, she remains an embarrassing reminder of something every bit as English as piers: our centuries-old lack of concern for our own heritage.

We are, at heart, vandals.

And as she continues to stand proud, her farcical recent history brings to mind a rather less funny version of another very English institution: the Carry On film. It’s entirely coincidental that the Palace Pier features prominently in Carry On at Your Convenience.

But however inconvenient, it’s the West Pier that seems determined to carry on regardless.

Laughing all the way to the bank

Valium, by Damien Hirst

People seem to have been getting into a grand old funk over Damien Hirst’s claim that he copies his children’s paintings and drawings.

Well, this was certainly the case at the Observer and at the Telegraph, in response to Hirst’s claim in an interview with the former.

At the Obs, the whinging was mostly about his being ‘a corporate whore’, while over at the Telegraph, comments concentrated on most of his own art resembling the contents of used nappies.

Don’t you just lurve reasoned debate?

As Will Gompertz explained at some length in What Are You Looking At? that no, your five-year-old could not have produced even the works of modern art that you find utterly incomprehensible.

You might think that a Mondrian, for instance, is simple or that Pollock simply dripped, but actually executing such a piece is a damned sight harder than many imagine.

Now to be quite clear, I’m not personally a fan of Hirst’s work, but he’s clever – not least in being able to exploit the market for whatever is deemed to be ‘hip’ and ‘trendy’ art among those who have more money than sense.

It was all encouraged in the halcyon days of the 1980s by the dear old Saatchis, who set out to prescribe what was cool – and, most importantly, to profit from it.

These are the same Saatchis who now routinely use Facebook to tell people that they can suggest new artists whose work would be worth investing in.

Buy them and the price will go up, of course, as they then become collectible. And the Saatchis will themselves make plenty of money from you taking their advice.

Oddly, none of the painters currently being touted by them seem to have chosen to represent a man appearing to throttle his wife.

But there’s an element of the emperor’s new clothes in all this: I’ve little doubt that, as he’s laughing all the way to the bank, Hirst is also laughing at those who pay millions for a piece that someone in his studio has produced to his instructions – based on something his children did, if we’re to believe his somewhat faux humility.

Indeed, never mind that fairytale – there’s always the classic modern art story of Marcel Duchamp and his urinal, a piece of ‘made’ art that was used entirely to extract the piss out of a group of self-appointed arbiters of what was and was not art – and in the process, itself became iconic and labelled ‘art’.

This is not a real Lowry

In the past, it would be the patron – often the church – who, in effect, made such decisions, but that has broadened out over the years, helped by, among other things, public galleries and exhibitions and also increasing numbers of people with disposable incomes and a desire to decorate their homes.

Mind, the likes of Hirst are not the only ones taking the proverbial out of people.

In a prime example of fools and cash being easily parted, the Facebook page for LS Lowry warned against a spate of fakes that are being sold on eBay.

They highlighted one in particular, which was secured with a bid of £670. Let’s allow for someone being a bit taken in by the background, but the figure? And just look at that face!

Beyond that, look at the signature – and it’s easy enough to Google the authentic signature. That’s not close.

Away from cyberspace, the Telegraph reported on 82-year-old Bill Harbord, a London man who has been selling fakes for years – although at rather lower prices.

It’s difficult to feel particularly sorry for anyone all those who have bought a picture from Mr Harbord. Honestly – be sensible: it’s really not very unlikely that you'll find a genuine Raoul Dufy painting for £250.

Actually, it’s tempting to laugh in much the same way you’ll possibly laugh at those who spend hundreds of thousands on a Damien Hirst because they’ve been told it’s good.

If you’re going to buy art by a well-known figure, make sure you know who you’re buying it from – a gallery will be a safer bet, for instance – and accustom yourself with the artist in question’s work, signature, any numbering system etc.

It’s not difficult – and it’s not rocket science.

If you do want to feel for someone, though, spare a thought for Martin Lang, who spent £100,000 on what he thought was an original Chagall.

Searching for authentification, it was sent to the Chagall Committee in Paris, which decided it was a fake and that it should thus be destroyed under French law.

Mr Lang wants it back – he’s still waiting to see if they’ll mark at as a forgery and send it back to him.