The Turner Prize 2024 – ‘Punjabi’ Art is Shortlisted

24.04.2024

What’s on the Turner Prize shortlist this year in terms of ‘Punjabi’ art? Covered with a giant white doily, a red Ford Escort vehicle is presented to us. The ‘art’ is in front of a photograph of a family with the car.

Rosie Cooper, director of Wysing Arts Centre, who sits on the judging panel, said Kaur sees the vehicle as a “representation of her dad’s first car and his migrant desires” and it “blasted snippets of uplifting pop songs referencing freedom and liberation throughout the space”.

https://news.sky.com/story/artist-who-covered-sports-car-with-giant-doily-nominated-for-turner-prize-13122021

Suneel’s Comment

Obviously the artist shortlisted in this country – when they are Indian – would necessarily be female. This is what ‘diversity’ means to white people when it comes to the Subcontinent – the women. Their books, their art, their cinema. It is all celebrated. Because they are heroic ‘victims’ of Indian culture to the West. Us men are to be ignored and marginalised. Because we are the ‘oppressors’ of women in this culture.

And what about this piece which white taste has valued? The big white doily is the key. It covers over the car. The migrant desire – according to the rules of white society – is to be covered over in whiteness. The white doily – the whiteness – is self-consciously patterned and artistic – it is the touch of art in the piece. Otherwise, there would just be a car and a family snapshot. The white doily – the whiteness – is what creates this exhibition as a piece of art work. It is what demonstrates ‘taste’, ‘selection’, artistic ‘discrimination’ (the pun is intended).

And what about this ‘migrant desire’ which – despite the capture of the car in the whiteness that is like a constraining net – blasts songs of freedom and liberation (laughable)? It is ideology at work. The veil of ideology covering over the vision of the car, the white veil over things for the migrant experience. Blinding the eyes and vision. Interfering. Coming between self and object, mind and reality. Art is the white veil itself. What else is? They sing of freedom. When they are the exploited. They sing of liberty. When they are constrained and bound by the white net.

The car. The phallic symbol. Red to signify status and dominance. Gross materialism. Migrant desire is couched as greed. Desire for masculinity in this patriarchal white supremacist society. Desire for control – one drives a car.

Desire for freedom – the car represents freedom. A cliched symbol of freedom the car. But this one is caught up in the net. Even the music – they blast snippets of songs about freedom. Even musically, the freedom is partial, disrupted, interrupted, punctured by purposely oppressive silence.

Do you know what the net signifies in India? The net of maya – illusion. Gross materialism. Trickery. What comes between us and the understanding of reality. The doily is perhaps maya. This white culture and its control, its limitation of freedom for the migrant. The doily becomes kitcsch art – described by several art historians as the artwork of a capitalistic, unthinking and unfeeling, philistine and totalitarian society.

Yet, there is a paradox. If I remember correctly from the Metro newspaper article that I read today about the art piece, the doily also represents the Sikh and Indian workers that worked in textiles factories in huge numbers when they first migrated here to the United Kingdom (Metro 24.04.2024). So this net of whiteness is being created by the migrants themselves. Their deference. Their blind adulation. Their willingness to be exploited. Their inability to revolt against the systems of power.

So what are the migrant desires of the Father in this image? As seen through the eyes of a Punjabi woman? Desire to criticise the wants of the Father? Or an attempt to be sympathetic to his wants?

The artist writes:

‘In this show I am having a conversation with personal histories,’ explains Kaur, ‘exploring improvisation and political mysticism as tools to reimagine tradition and inherited myths.’

https://list.co.uk/news/43283/jasleen-kaur-alter-altar

But is this a re-imagination? Look at the piece again. It tries to base itself against reality as ideology – against the photograph, the representation of reality. The photograph has the Indian family in it. The base unit of Punjabi and Indian culture. The finished art exhibit has no family in it. It has a relationship merely to the Father in a patriarchal system of culture. A Father that wants to be covered in whiteness. Is this what is valued in this culture? Probably. The probability is on the side that adulates whiteness and patriarchy. The family is forgotten in favour of the Master. In favour of isolation and individualism. In favour of the desire for mastery and control and power.

Terence Conran’s Memories of Dora Batty – Dora Batty as a Person

23.05.2023

MY PREVIOUS REVIEW OF THE DORA BATTY POSTER PARADE AT THE LONDON TRANSPORT MUSEUM:

https://diaryofaloneman.home.blog/2023/04/07/dora-batty-poster-parade-london-transport-museum/

(note: This analysis has been done for non-profit purposes of education, and makes ‘fair use’ of the publication cited for purposes of analysis and comment in the public domain).

1946 – Sir Terence Conran was a student of Dora Batty’s at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in textile design (he wanted to be a textile designer at first). He mentions her in his autobiography. this is an attempted analysis of the writing – a psychological study of Dora Batty (as artist) through Conran’s recollections.

CONRAN TURNED UP FOR HIS INTERVIEW WITH DORA BATTY WITH ‘repeat-pattern drawings, a book of pressed flowers (Suneel’s note – maybe this is why she liked him so much and gave him a chance – she loved drawing flowers), paintings, a few fuzzy photographs, ceramics, and bits and bobs of metalwork and woodwork.’ (26)

Source: Sir Terence Conran, Terence Conran: My Life in Design (Conran Octopus, 2016) – ALL REFERENCES IN BRACKETS REFER TO THIS SOURCE.

(NOTE) GOOGLE BOOKS: (Sir Terence Conran) founded the Habitat chain of stores in England. Starting in 1977, his U.S.-based Conran’s stores helped launch the home furnishings retail boom. He is the author of thirteen books and was knighted in 1983 for his service to British industry and design. He lives in London, England.

DORA AS ‘WONDERFUL’ AND WARM-HEARTED

Conran describes Dora as ‘wonderful’ (26). She stands out as a unique (and warm-hearted) person in contrast to ‘a bunch of stern middle-aged ladies’. Dora gives Conran a chance and lets him pass the interview even though he didn’t have much knowledge of textiles (26). This reveals various aspects of Dora’s personality:

Conran remembers Dora fondly. He has no reason to lie about what she was like. This indicates that she had a welcoming and friendly, nurturing aura as a teacher
She was good at recognising talent in someone like Conran who would become a famous designer
She would nurture promise if given a chance – even in an unconventional way – Conran says he was actually surprised to have passed the interview (26). The lack of conventionality and following strict rules of ‘objective’ assessment shows that Dora had good intuition, flexibility and discretion and judgement (reminder – look at how influential Conran is)
Not everyone gives people a chance in life – Dora was a good, generous person
Dora was compassionate to the young and inexperienced – and patient enough to teach such students even if they didn’t know that much
Conran says he was shy (26) – Dora looked beyond social conventionalities and was impartial enough to give Conran a chance on his art, rather than judging him as a person
GENDER: After he passed the interview, Conran was the only boy in a class of 33 women. Just like the London Underground gave Dora a chance as a woman in a male-dominated industry, she gave Conran a chance as a man in a female dominated industry. She was fair and inclusive and challenged the social norms in favour of meritocracy and giving someone a chance (to change the status quo).

STRICT AND CAPABLE
‘Dora Batty was very strict but she ran the course superbly. She saw that her students really had something to do at every moment they were there…’ (26).
Why was she strict? Maybe because she cared about art and design so much. But this also indicates a controlling side to Dora. If you look at her art, it is all very controlled and restrained and ordered.
Dora as overachiever student? She piled on work on the students – maybe this is because she worked very hard herself (ceramics, textiles, posters, etc. – it takes a lot of work, effort and learning to master all these different disciplines).

MULTICULTURAL, RESOURCEFUL AND HISTORICAL – THE MUSEUM-GOER

‘One of the most fascinating things she arranged was a twice-a-week, behind-the-scenes visit to the historic textiles collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, where there are vast halls with hundreds of thousands of prints and textiles from all over the world…’ (26)

Dora was an avid museum-goer – it’s fitting that she is in a museum through her art
Conran was there at the school in 1946 – Dora had negotiated the teaching at the V & A in the immediate post-war period when there were limited opportunities – she was incredibly resourceful
The first poster with Persephone and Hermes reveals her interest in historical costume and textiles, as well as her multiculturalism (ancient Greece)
Dora had good connections – she was a people person. Imagine how hard it would be to arrange a behind-the-scenes at a museum today, especially such a prestigious one – people wanted to help Dora. Remember, she was a woman in a man’s world, too… Even more of an achievement
The initiative of Dora: this is quite a creative solution to education – to share world-class resources that most people don’t have access to for her students and to give them a multicultural and global education

THE INSPIRER/THE MUSE/THE GOOD TEACHER

‘Dora brought in a whole raft of young designers and artists to broaden our horizons and inspire us.’ (26)

Dora is interested in contemporary art – see her Art Deco influences in posters such as the RAF poster. She kept up with everything that was happening (to improve the craft – conscientiousness, awareness).
Dora likes the energy of the young and encourages them. Not only did she teach youngsters, give inexperienced youngsters like Conran a chance, but also, she promoted the work of young designers and artists. Compare this to the current climate: she used her power for good and for a meritocracy. She challenged the status quo in favour of the new and change (all the while also giving her students a historical, world culture with the V & A). She is generous, embracing, inclusive, creates a stimulating intellectual environment of like minded souls.
Remember, she is choosing these new artists and designers because they could inspire – great artistic discretion and knowledge of people.

Some Thoughts on Medusa in the Painted Hall Ceiling at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich

Some Thoughts on Medusa in the Painted Hall Ceiling at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich

17.03.2023 (amended 07.05.2023)

There is an obvious theme of mirroring in the Painted Ceiling, which you can see in the mirroring of the arches or balustrades and in the mirroring of defeated sea vessels. THE MIRROR OF PRUDENCE – important for royal authority to control the mirror and mirror images. I am looking at this around the figure of Medusa.

The Facts are that the severed head of Medusa is depicted on Athena’s shield as in ancient Greek myth. Perseus the hero slew Medusa while looking at her reflection in his own shield so that he could avoid being turned to stone through her gaze.

– Wikipedia: “Medusa was beheaded by the Greek hero Perseus, who then used her head, which retained its ability to turn onlookers to stone, as a weapon until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity, the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the Gorgoneion”.

Medusa means ‘guardian’ or ‘protectress’ in Ancient Greek (Wikipedia). Possibly why she is on the shield. Athena is wisdom/protectress of the city of Athens. So, there is a doubling between Athena and Medusa in the role of protectress. Because Perseus looked in the mirror to slay Medusa, there is a role for doubling in the original myth – I will argue that Medusa is associated with doubling that gets out of control later (as she is associated with the Hydra, which also doubles). (DEFINITION – Doubling means produces copies, reflections, doppelgangers, etc.)

– The most obvious Double: There is another Gorgon depicted right of the shield and to the right of Hercules who is clubbing away at the Vices with Athena. While it may be that this Gorgon is a sister of Athena (and it has been suggested that the gorgon is ‘Envy’ amongst the vices stamped out by William and Mary), there is an uncanny, visual doubling between the gorgon and Medusa at least. The uninitiated would not know that it is not another Medusa. The Vices also included the snake-like many headed Hydra – Hydra is a water monster (like Medusa – see below about her links to water). I AM ARGUING THAT THE WATER LINK IS CONNECTED TO THE THEME OF DOUBLING – WATER HAS A REFLECTION WHICH DOUBLES THE INDIVIDUAL LOOKING INTO IT.

– DOUBLING AROUND THE ROYAL CREST: Queen Mary as Athena at least

– MEDUSA’S LINKS TO THE SEA/NAVAL PENSIONERS – ILLEGITIMATE RELATIONSHIPS TO THE GOD OF THE SEA AND NAVAL POWER:

The three Gorgon sisters—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale—were all children of the ancient marine deities Phorcys (or “Phorkys”) and his sister Ceto (or “Keto”), chthonic monsters from an archaic world (Wikipedia).
In a late version of the Medusa myth, by the Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.794–803), Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, but when Neptune/Poseidon (THE GOD OF THE SEA) had sex with her in Minerva/Athena‘s temple,[7] Minerva punished Medusa by transforming her beautiful hair into horrible snakes.
When Perseus slayed Medusa, she was pregnant by Poseidon. SHE WAS ABOUT to Reproduce/Double as the bad mother, dark mother (Jung), produce an alternative sea god, naval power, etc.

Subjective Facts

– We note that the Gorgon next to Hercules (THE ONE THAT DOUBLES AS MEDUSA VISUALLY IF NOT LITERALLY) has escaped the goddess and demi-god casting the Vices out of the kingdom. Instead of being under their feet and being trampled on, she is actually equal with them, as though she is divine herself (doubling the divinity of the gods).

– THE ROYAL CREST – Look at the gilding on the royal crest and compare it with the shield of Athena and Medusa’s head on it. The gold of Medusa’s head mirrors the royal crest of Queen Mary. However, the inclusion of Queen Mary as Athena on the right of the crest (doubling) creates a good double as opposed to a bad double (like Medusa). Let us remember the doubling of the idea of ‘protrectress’ (‘Medusa’ in Ancient Greek). Queen Mary was the ‘protectress’ of the Naval Pensioners…

– (The gorgon that visually doubles as Medusa is possibly Envy.) However, if it turns out the Gorgon that visually doubles as Medusa is Euryale, one of Medusa’s two sisters, this might mean ‘the wide sea’ (as a daughter of the sea gods) (Greek and Roman Mythology, A to Z, Kathleen N. Daly, Marian Rengel, 2009, 54). AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE, THE SEA REFLECTS – IT IS A MIRROR… Her mouth is open on the painted ceiling: she was known for an agonised, piercing shriek after Medusa was killed, which was turned into a lamenting song and music for humans (ibid.)

– Athena actually directs the shield with Medusa’s head on it at Hercules, not at the Vices – against men (Medusa is associated with feminism in modern scholarship – is this a coincidence?)

– Hydra kept on spouting two heads when one was cut off (doubling), similarly the Gorgons are repeating in the painting, or doubling. Doubling between Athena and Medusa as protectress. Deduction – there is a theme of doubling going on.

– Apollo killed the Python (snake/chaos) – snakes at bottom to illustrate their lowliness, killer of snakes at top as God of reason, light (enlightenment) etc. Is Apollo being badly doubled by Louis IV ‘the Sun King’ that is being trampled by King William? (depends on if this is Louis IV or not). Certainly, Truth is holding is a miniature sun in her hand – the doubling of Apollo with light (truth).

– Medusa was killed through doubling – in the mirror, when she was to give birth to the god of the sea’s son. Wikipedia: “In most versions of the story, she was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus because Polydectes wanted to marry Perseus’s mother. The gods were well aware of this, and Perseus received help. He received a mirrored shield from Athena, sandals with gold wings from Hermes, a sword from Hephaestus and Hades‘s helm of invisibility. Since Medusa was the only one of the three Gorgons who was mortal, Perseus was able to slay her while looking at the reflection from the mirrored shield he received from Athena. During that time, Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon”.

– Woman as animal nature – is this is link to the sea and the power of nature in the water? That woman/nature can’t be controlled, but controls (as in Queen Mary controlling the kingdom of men?) Is this why the Gorgon escapes the casting out of the vices in the kingdom and mimics the power of the gods?

INTERPRETATION (Psychoanalysis, mirroring)

– Does Medusa and the other Gorgon represent a male artist’s misogynistic response to Queen Mary’s rule (as ‘Queen of the Sea) [part of the general expectation that only men rule and women’s rule leads to monstrosity and chaos – chaos as the snake which Apollo defeated]? This is a CONTROL OF DOUBLING – IF ONE WOMAN’S RULE IS ACCEPTED, OTHER WOMEN WILL RULE AS HER ‘DOUBLES’. Is this an example of the attitude to the daughter that usurped her father’s throne? We know that Athena is also doubling as Queen Mary from the arch. The whole game is about doubling: the ‘good’ double and the ‘bad’ double. On the one hand, Mary can double as the goddess, the good double. On the other hand, is she doubling as Medusa the monster, with illegitimate power, producing Hydra like monsters in the kingdom as the Vices? Is she the reverse of Apollo the Sun King?

– Between Hercules and the Gorgon, there is a V sign (largely empty, representing lack, something to be filled in as per misogynistic constructions) – if we look in terms of psychoanalysis, does this represent the vagina (and therefore female power?) Snake as phallic symbol – women seizing phallic power illegitimately in the form of Athena with the shield and with forming Hydra type monsters (i.e. more women that rule – Mary led to Queen Anne and no male heirs)?

Dora Batty Poster Parade – London Transport Museum

07.04.2023

You can see all of the posters in the Poster Parade here:

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/the-collection

1^st Floor, London Transport Museum

Adult ticket: 24 pounds, Concessions including students: 23 pounds (ANNUAL PASS)

REVIEW

While I have many interests in life, there is one game that has always captivated my attention. My friends, it is THE Game. The game of interpretation: finding meaning, making connections, excavating the context, trying to understand what others are trying to express underneath a rigmarole of deceptive diversions. I have played this game quite seriously, having studied for an English Literature degree and then having pursued doctoral studies in the subject (then publishing books and articles). The game is all-consuming and unending. I lie in bed at nights replaying conversations, working over sentences for half an hour at a time if they are important enough to warrant it in the conversations I have during the day. To play the game, I have studied all these subjects at university level: legal studies, English literature, history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, anthropology, criminology, sociology, psychology, the history of photography, feminism, Marxism, deconstruction, Postcolonialism – and now – art history. Besides forays in my spare time into mythology, archaeology, cryptography and the decoding of languages, language learning, politics, animal intelligence, evolutionary psychology, biology, and the physical sciences which reveal how humankind attempts to fathom the cosmos.

Why do I mention The Game? I survey the posters in the London Transport Museum Poster Parade because I love to play it. And above all, the most enticing thing is a mystery, a puzzle, a seeming dead-end, what first comes as a blank wall. As I have admitted so much, it will now do to admit more. It was a genuinely exciting moment to encounter an unknown female artist who has not received much critical attention and about whom I could make a big contribution towards understanding. The subject was the enigmatic Dora Batty…

Little is known about Dora’s life. She is known only for her professional roles and her output. Like other women artists, she has been neglected, never achieved the fame of her male compatriots… As a result, one cannot bring biography to a study of her artwork. Neither can one be misled by what others have written, which seems to be a particularly abhorrent current practice of the scholar, the interpretor and the guide. One imagines a woman that never made much of an impression. One cannot even visualise her appearance because a photograph has not even been recovered. For a moment, I had a fantasy of tracing her family genealogy so that I could try and contact any living descendants that might have a diary, a photograph, written records or objects of some description so that I could have something else than the art. In the game, it is permitted to cheat… What a delicious daydream: an expedition, an adventure, new people to meet, new avenues to pursue, a quest of interpretation…

But I am left to just looking at the work and thinking. Justice demands a scrutiny of the woman artist’s works, a redressing of her dismissal by (White) Man. Let us begin.

The first exhibit that meets us in the Poster Parade is ‘The Underground brings all things nearer’. We are in the conventional grounds of Greek Myth. As it clearly states, the poster celebrates ‘The Return of Persephone’. She is being rescued from the underground by Hermes. Dora loves to tease. The obvious play is upon the concept of the ‘underground’. While it signifies Hades and hell, it is also obviously referencing the Tube. For a poster commissioned by London Transport, this is clearly a subtle bite at the hand that feeds her, the delicious tease of a mocking and ego-defeating woman. From the Underground, hell and the tube, Persephone is emerging. The concept of the poster is that from the Underground, which we imagine as the realm of the dead, life and fertility is emerging in the form of Persephone. But there is a moment of feminism in that period of emerging women’s rights and the Suffragette movement – Persephone (woman oppressed, captured, imprisoned) is rescued from her controlling husband (the LAW, Death, Sovereignty, POWER…) Now, there is the question. What is the biographical aspect, what is the women’s movement? The Suffragettes were around at this time and they were fighting against the patriarchal laws of marriage, with its enclosure of the woman in the domestic realm. But is there something else in Dora’s life? Bearing the hallmarks of its time, Persephone is rescued by Hermes, a man… There isn’t total emancipation of the woman. Is there a new man in Dora’s life at this time, an extra-marital affair…? However, one also remembers that Hermes is the protector of travellers, the god of roads… He is dressed as a traveller, of course, with winged sandals. There are subtle resonances for the highly educated and the classicists in this poster about travel. Dora is clearly classically educated… The game, my friends. One has to learn the mythology of the world to play it…

The tragedy with the poster is that Persephone still had to spend months of the year in the Underworld – there is no ultimate freedom from MAN AS KING AND DEATH… Ambiguity and despair is always there in the background. Is this a realistic assessment of women’s politics at the time (and still now?) Or is it the acceptance that Dora cannot release herself from her marriage (was she married, or is the poster simply about a fantasy of emancipation)?

Now, let us talk about the flowers. Flowers flood the posters. Persephone is also holding a flower. Is the flower sex (the flower is a sexual organ which is ‘penetrated’)? Are we witnessing sexual liberation in Dora’s psyche? The implicit love triangle in the first poster – Hermes, Persephone, Hades. Travel itself as sex (a holiday romance, perhaps?). The fantasy of sex rather than its achievement from a repressed woman? Dear Dora, why do you not write what is the case? If the hypothesis that the flowers are sex is right, can it be confirmed by some of the other posters? [It is worthwhile to mention here that there are other suggestions. Not only have female artists painted flowers throughout art history, as a ‘woman’s genre’, but also that women themselves have been described as flowers throughout history and particularly guilty were the Victorians and those around at the start of the twentieth century – flower as woman herself in this art, or rather her sexual body and her body as a body of desire…)

In ‘Bluebells are out’, an anonymous female caresses the flowers lovingly. Her lips are upon them, her hand clenches them. Her senses are engaged. She smells them. So we have touch, the sexuality of a kiss, intoxication with the scent. Full sensory engagement. She also looks directly into the flowers. Is this look at the flower and sex what the viewer is expected to understand and echo? Woman playing with her own sex and sexuality? Is this the revealing mirror of subjectivity at the heart of the image? Let us be Freudian and make an insinuation about how the hand is holding the phallic bunch of stalks of flowers at the bottom of the image…

In ‘Crocuses are out’, woman swoons over the flowers which she caresses again with her hands. With her eyes shut in ecstasy and Lacanian jouissance… The flower she smells is pinkish red – the colour of sex…

So, perhaps we have an exhibition of a woman artist that is pursuing liberation, including sexual liberation. Perhaps we are seeing a woman fighting against the Law and the figure of the King for a new tomorrow and for ownership over her own body and desires… Perhaps we see Dora the fighter. But a jaded fighter. After all, what is the fight of the artist? It is true that many of the Suffragettes were artists, a disproportionate amount. Was the main fight in the visual arts and against the visual culture of the Law and the King, Oppressor Man?

Let us leave identity politics for a moment. Let us talk about Dora as she is in my favourite works of hers. I will write first about the interesting pattern in ‘Whitsuntide by Underground’. The artist has woven together many moments of leisure into almost a textile pattern (she worked in textiles). The composition is crowded and flooded with energy. People are joined in small communities by their pursuits, families, friends, athletes. They are also integrated in nature and the countryside through trees, fields and water, animals. There is a harmony of leisure and nature, life and the world, an inter-connected and unbreakable pattern. And let us not forget the female body’s interaction with the flowers in the early posters – nature is a body that unites with woman’s body. Woman is nature, humankind is nature – the celebration of the animal self that we have come from that lived in trees…

Similarly, ‘There is still the country’ shows the woman’s body wedded to the (phallic, it must be said) tree. The whole scene is blown about from a strong wind and enriched with the sun which seems to emanate from the woman’s head, her creative force and mind. There is pure energy, enlightenment (emancipation)… The leaves fall from the trees – there is transformation, the relentless but cyclical turning of the time as in Hindu thought… What is dead and dying is to be shed to make space for what is living….

So is this Dora? Or is this merely Suneel’s Dora? One makes an argument. One seeks to persuade. But more than that, one seeks to know. In the absence of clues, one looks to a Suffragette context. In the absence of a photograph, one tries to plumb a mind. The Dora exhibit is interesting and important because it brings these thoughts to mind. It asks why a woman of such talent has no place in thought. It seeks to rectify this wrong. Dora’s art is stylistically very Art Deco. I do not know if she followed the movement, or how much she contributed. I do not know how important she is in the history of Women’s Rights for making art that explores women’s issues and attempts to rescue them from the ills of sexual repression (if sex is the theme that I have not invented for our Dora). And finally, one makes an admission. The interest, the thread that I have followed is that Dora is Modern Woman. Someone that I do not understand – if anyone does. To understand the mind of this challenging and reticent creature, one often has to gaze at the expressions that she leaves about her in the world. And to form an opinion, one has to dare a conjecture, even as a man – which might wholly be wrong and is entirely contestable, of course…

You can see all of the posters in the Poster Parade here:

https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/the-collection

List of Posters:

Dora Batty, 1923 – The Underground brings all things nearer
Dora Batty, 1925 – From country to the heart of town
Dora Batty, 1924 – Foxgloves, Kew Gardens
Dora Batty, 1925 – From town to open country
Dora Batty, 1921 – Travel with the children
Dora Batty, 1930 – Season ticket, travel cheaply, save money
Dora Batty, 1927 – Bluebells are out
Dora Batty, 1927 – Blackberry time
Dora Batty, 1935 – Special shows of tulips
Dora Batty, 1927 – Crocuses are out
Dora Batty, 1927 – Daffodils are blooming
Dora Batty, 1932 – Regents Park to see the rose garden
Dora Batty, 1928 – Buy a season ticket
Dora Batty, 1924 – Survivals of the past, Painted Hall
Dora Batty, 1932 – RAF display, Colindale station
Dora Batty, 1936 – Trooping the colour
Dora Batty, 1924 – Survivals of the past, Yeoman Warders
Dora Batty, 1934 – Easter
Dora Batty, 1938 – Out and about by London Transport
Dora Batty, 1926 – Make yours a General holiday
Dora Batty, 1931 – Whitsuntide by Underground
Dora Batty, 1926 – Hampton Court by tram
Dora Batty, 1926 – There is still the country

Hallyu the Korean Wave Review – Victoria & Albert Museum Exhibition

01.04.2023

https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/hallyu-the-korean-wave

At home, they sit in a neglected and increasingly dusty pile – with my other language learning books picked up mainly from charity shops – or the internet when the owners lost their interest in learning them (14 languages in total and building). Untouched, they are marked out for future study when my life is not just about work and academia, carefully compiled: a set of Korean language books. I picked them up in a free hotel book sharing point in a country where they have many Korean workers (it is not Korea, my friends).

Although I never got onto the Korea loving bandwagon with ‘Gangham Style’ or ‘Squid Games’, and I didn’t watch the film that won the Oscars (‘Parasite’), I have taught several Korean people when I used to volunteer to teach English to refugees and migrants over five years. I watch some K-Pop, although it is just one band called (G)-IDLE as I like watching the young women dance and perform and I enjoy the cinematography of the music videos. So it was with this light acquaintance in need of improvement and because I wanted to see the Friday Late at the V & A that I meandered my way at the end of the night into the ‘Hallyu the Korean Wave’ exhibit.

The exhibit is exciting, eclectic and vibrant and speaks to the young. Inundated with interest, the walls showcase Korean film, music, beauty and fashion. All of the senses are awakened and rejuvenated by an immersion into a colourful Korean cultural life.

When you go in, you are confronted with several screens showing ‘Gangham Style’ and its parodies. Of course, this song is synonymous with K-Pop and is probably one of the only contemporary songs that everyone in cities around the world probably knows. We get to see the audacious pink suit that Psy wore for the music video. But the surprising thing to learn is that the song and the suit mock South Korea’s ‘hyper-consumerism and material pursuit’, using the district of Gangham as an example. The suit is a sneer at what the elites wear in that area and the iconic dance moves are snipes at posers and wannabes that emulate that kind of lifestyle.

If Korean culture is currently chic, then the next section of the exhibit makes us reflect on the historical miracle of how a colonised, war-torn country which was ravaged by the Cold War and also ‘one of the most violent conflicts in modern history’ in the Korean War of 1950 has followed a ‘remarkable trajectory’ to become a ‘leading cultural powerhouse by the early 2000s’. The formula seems to be ‘governmental control, daring strategies and IT innovation’, alongside quick hands and quick minds.

I will write about the parts that excited me the most in what followed on the journey through the massive space that the exhibition enfolded. A long term fan of athletics and gymnastics, I was entranced by the Volunteer guide uniform for the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. The clothing draws inspiration from the national costume which is called hanbok. The outfit is beautiful, graceful, an accomplishment of functional style inter-weaved with the Olympic spirit and colours. It is the perfect metaphor of endurance, of a people that have kept their traditions while becoming truly international, even though enmity and colonisation attempted to destroy their way of life. Here, as elsewhere in the exhibition, I was reminded of the affinities of Korea’s history with India’s. In fact, there was even a Hindi film poster which showed a pirated (‘adapted’) Korean film, which influenced my finding of affinities with my motherland even more.

It was also a surreal experience to see the wig worn by Choi Min-sik in ‘Oldboy’. This is probably the most memorable Korean film I have watched. When I was immersed in this filmic universe, I just assumed that the wig was the actor’s real hair. In the exhibit, removed from the face, the wig was patently, even insolently artificial. Yet it still teemed with an energy, almost like that of life. The make up and hair director of the film, Song Jong-hee intended to infuse the wig with wildness to convey the ‘feral emotions’ and the effect of the years of incarceration on the protagonist of the film. To me, raised in Hinduism and Sikhism, where hair is sacred and the god Shiva is known for the strength of his hair, the hairstyle raised the resonance of India, religion, power, feelings hard to express or even describe.

A particularly interesting section of the exhibition was the exploration of beauty standards in Korean culture, since the nation is a ‘global trendsetter’ in this area. The historical background until the 1910s (perhaps longer?) is seven hundred years of maintaining beauty as a ‘moral obligation’ as attractiveness symbolises not only social status, but also virtue.

Where did I spend the most time in the exhibition? I sat before a big screen watching a compilation of snippets from K-Pop videos, admiring the crystal sharpness of today’s video cameras, the lightning flashes of Korean dance moves and the stunning physical beauty of the people. It was intoxicating. Yet, as I watched, the critical part of my mind kept on turning over the question of whether what I was watching was something authentic and organic, something different, or just indoctrination and influence from the Western world, a parroting of the Western music video. I am still not sure.

Surely, ‘Hallyu the Korean Wave’ is one of the most memorable exhibitions that I have been to. I was also pleased to see that the exhibition seems to have been put together from Korean descent people, which seems to give it the authenticity that is lacking from Orientalising Western depictions of Asian people such as Indians. I learned a general history of modern Korea, was amused, inspired to learn more, ever more determined to one day make a serious foray into the language. I felt the unity of Asian culture as a man of Indian descent, almost a sense of belonging. Out of the three exhibitions I went to in the V & A that day, the exhibition was my personal favourite. I never felt even a moment of boredom in it and my attention was focused entirely on the exhibits.

https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/hallyu-the-korean-wave

The Refugee Boat – Some Thoughts on an Alternative History of Transport

10.03.2022

If you go to a transport museum, the likelihood is that you will see ultra-expensive vehicles which were at the cutting edge of technology. These cars, buses, trains and trams would have had all the modern conveniences and would have been fairly safe, even if safety standards in the past were laxer. In terms of production, an entire army of workers would have been involved in the construction, probably an ‘international’ team (by which I mean white Europeans).

The history you would find in such museums would be progressive, a story of increasing rationality, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, capitalism, big business. A story the rich tell themselves to celebrate the world that they have created: the globalised, interlinked world of transport convenience. Where, theoretically, there are no physical barriers to community, commuting, connection.

Standing out in stark contrast to this ‘Whig’ version of history is the humble refugee boat.

The refugee boat is fairly inexpensive. It is the mode of transport of the poor, the desperately oppressed seeking a better life in the only way that they can given their losses in the lottery of life and birth. The refugee boat, while not the worst piece of technology ever invented, is still pretty primitive. The standard image is the unpretentious dinghy, clearly unfit for the purpose of a long journey by the sea in dangerous waters. Travel by sea is itself one of the longest, most inconvenient, inefficient and deadly forms of travel, where you are seemingly at the utmost mercy of nature. There are no modern conveniences. Hardly any water to drink, hardly any room for food. No toilet. There is no safety. There is probably more than a 50:50 chance of death. What about the production? The workers that made these products were probably exploited in sweatshops in economically less dominant countries around the globe.

The history of the refugee boat is the unadulterated, unpolished history of transport in our times. History is not always written by the victors. It is also written by the losers. The refugee boat is the testament to the fact that our modes of travel are not objectively the best. They are merely fit for the types of people and the societies that use them. The transport history in museums is the product of capitalism and the reign of the rich. The transport history of the undocumented migrants is the product of those that power has missed out, those that capitalism has downtrodden.

The unvarnished history of the refugee boat – which the media presents as a horrible throwback to primitive times, a history which is now culminating in government interception of such travellers and their lives being thrown away like trash somewhere else, as someone else’s problem – is the real history of travel beyond propaganda, advertisement, embellishment, cultural narcissism. This is the real story of the world that the ultra-rich have created: a world where you can’t even travel from one country to another to try and better your life. A world in which you are tied to the place you were born and the lack of opportunities there. Why can’t anyone tell this history?

Blindness, Vision and Fury: The Trojan Horse, the Mahabharata and the Clash of Visual Cultures

28.01.2018

One day, after having arrived back to England and our home from a trip to India, my mother dressed me and my two brothers up in brown kurtas and pyjamas. She then adorned our foreheads with vermillion, put crowns upon our heads and handed us each a bow and an arrow. We sat there, waiting to strike our enemies with our keen eyes. There is a photograph in the family album which bears witness to the event. There were various motivations behind this re-enactment. We watched the Mahabharata religiously every week on the Indian morning on British TV. The characters in the epic were our heroes. It was the love of my Indian mother for her children that led her to see us as those inspirational warriors in the Mahabharata and as princes. It was the uncanny intuition of an Indian mother that we were in an invisible war and were to fight an invisible enemy. This intuition, compelled by instinct and knowledge beyond comprehension, was absolutely correct.

Let us not start with the Mahabharata, however, for we will return to this great work and I will explain why my Indian mother was correct in her intuition. Let us start with the Iliad by Homer, a work with which my Western audience will have much greater familiarity, I hope. The Iliad, it is somewhat apparent, is about beauty and its destructive force. The most obvious subject of the work is therefore beauty and its relationship to vision. The Trojans take off with the most beautiful woman in the world, called Helen (which means “Greek”). However, Helen belongs to the Greeks. They feel they have the monopoly on beauty. They punish what they call the abduction of Helen, although it is clear that Helen elopes with the supposed culprit of her own volition, to bring the greatest beauty in the world to Troy.

How do the Greeks beat the Trojans in the contest of beauty? Famously, it is the Trojan horse stratagem that wins the war for them. The Greeks hide inside the Trojan horse which is presented as a gift to the Trojans. Through hiding, they enter the city at night and then massacre all of the Trojans in an ancient genocide. But have you ever considered carefully how the Trojan horse is related to vision in this epic about beauty and the contest to possess it? Let us take a little time to do so now.

The Trojan horse stratagem works through concealment, invisibility and blindness. The Greeks hide inside the Trojan horse, concealing their identities. They are invisible. They present the Trojan horse as a gift when in fact it is more akin to a curse, the reverse of a gift. They thus conceal the meaning of what the Trojan horse is and do not allow it to be seen for what it literally is. The Greeks therefore institute blindness on several levels: the Trojans can neither see the horse for what it is nor can they detect that their enemies are concealed inside it. The Trojans become blind. However, it is not just the Trojans who are blind. Everyone is blind. The Greeks hiding inside the horse cannot see the outside world. They sit in darkness. They are abstracted from the outside world.

The Trojan horse is the product of a Greek and Western culture in which what is considered valuable is not external appearance, but what is conceived of as hidden deep inside things, their essences. The Trojans are considered foolish because they look at external appearance and do not go deeply into the essences of things, the inside. This is regarded as their fatal weakness. This simple idea, that external appearances are deceptive is the founding tenet of Western civilisation and its supposed truth. It is the mark of the Western visual culture in which our thinkers state that the externally visible world does not exist, just as the Greeks blindly sit in the belly of the horse, doing away with the vision of the world. It therefore becomes clear why Helen is castigated for her very beauty, our heaven on earth. The external beauty of persons and their visual appearance are at odds with the idea of essences and internal value. External appearance, which is associated with the body of Helen, the body of a female, in a particularly misogynistic manner, can only be destructive in this world view: it destroys both the Greeks who fight for Helen and the Trojans who are misled by the external appearance of Helen and the Trojan horse. Yet the Greeks are thought to surmount the external appearance of things and finally win. They are not the victims of a genocide.

The Iliad is from the 8^th Century B.C.E. The Mahabharata is written in roughly the same period and I contend that it responds to the visual culture of the Greeks. The Mahabharata is not about conquering a people and subsequent genocide. It is about a family reclaiming what is rightfully theirs. The people that dispossess the princes in the epic are the sons of a blind king that greedily wish to hold onto their power. They represent the blind. Let us focus on the way that the war is won in the Mahabharata and how it is related to vision. I believe that there are two important scenes.

The first scene is the killing of the implacable enemy Duryodhana. Duryodhana’s mother had blessed him so that he was invincible. She was living a blindfolded life so that she could be the same as her husband. However, she took off her blindfold to grant her son invincibility with her vision which had lain dormant all those years it had not been used. Duryodhana, however, was ashamed to reveal his body to his mother and wore a loin cloth so that he would not appear fully naked before her. His nether regions were therefore not protected by vision but were invisible to his mother’s gaze, concealed. He therefore insisted on his mother’s partial blindness. Bhima killed Duryodhana because of this very insistence on the blindness of a mother. Bhima struck Duryodhana below the waist at his weak point. Thus, Bhima destroyed the way of the blind, the way of invisibility and concealment. It was where the world was concealed in the genitals of his opponent that he knew he could gain the victory and deliver the death stroke. The concealing of the body, world and nature is always wrong.

A prior scene reveals the ethic of the Mahabharata and its idea of vision and power, which is that war is to be fought openly, without concealment. This scene also reveals why Duryodhana’s inflicting of blindness on his mother is seen as a terrible sin and why the misogynistic Iliad, which castigates female beauty, is so wrong. This is because the Mahabharata celebrates the vision of the woman’s body. One of the other prominently invincible foes of the dispossessed princes was Bhishma. Bishma had once caused a woman to lose her lover and she had vowed to be reincarnated so as to kill him. She came back as a man, but Bishma knew that she was a woman. The man/woman Sihandhi was used as a shield so that Bhishma could not attack as it was against his warrior code of honour to attack a woman. So long as the vision of woman was before him, Bhishma was powerless and could not fight for the sons of the blind king, the party of the blind. Blindness was defeated by the sight and the form of a woman. Instead of hiding and concealing themselves, therefore, and attacking by cowardly stealth, the princes won the battle by putting themselves behind woman and using her as their shield and weapon of utmost power. It was the form of a woman which won the battle for them. The form of a woman did not cause destruction, but gave them back their kingdom. They immersed themselves in the vision and feeling of a woman to revenge herself on the man who wronged her. The princes’ fight against the wrong that has been done to them is therefore in parallel with the wrong that has been done to women. Their invincible enemies fall because they have wronged women and those who have been put into the position of women: in the weaker position. This is a direct response to the misogyny of the blind who can only see a woman’s body and vision in negative terms. It is a response to a Western culture in which women, like Helen are to be won as objects of status. In the Mahabharata, woman is not to be won. Woman is to win.

The vision and intuition of an Indian mother puts me firmly in the grounds of the Mahabharata. Yet my location in this Western society has aimed terribly to seduce me into the path of misogyny, concealment and blindness. In the past, I have truly made errors of judgement and of feeling but I wish to free myself of that horrible past. I put before my eyes the beautiful vision of a woman’s body and I remember the goddess. As I have very briefly noted here, the clash of visual cultures is thousands upon thousands of years old and it is fighting in my breast today. I am continuing the fight because I remember the day when my mother saw me as one of the great warriors in the Mahabharata. It is not easy. There is a new challenge every day. My basic Ancient Greek and ignorance of Sanskrit stand in my way, certainly. However, I continue the war in my analysis of the relationship between law and photography in English fiction from the mid-nineteenth century because the language of my thought has been in English. I have no platform, no network, very little audience. I am one son of Mother India in a world of foreigners and strangers. Yet I ask those that do read my writing to question their own place in this great and invisible war with an invisible enemy and ask themselves whether they would be the children of India or the children of the Ancient Greeks. That, I argue, is the essential question.