One for the Road

Deservedly lauded since the news of his death was announced on Christmas Day, friends of Harold Pinter in the theatre have uniformly mourned their loss of a generous companion who happened also to be a genuine literary giant. Influenced by the purity of language found in the prose and dramatic writings of Samuel Beckett, Pinter became, in retrospect, his only real theatrical equal. While literary movements came and went, he had that rare allusive gift of contemporaneity.

What was astonishing about Harold Pinter was that right from his first play, 1957's The Room, he seemed ready-formed as a devastatingly incisive and individual voice. Both in the spare, halting, guarded nature of his dialogue and the observation of the underlying menace in the everyday. Pinteresque. That adjective described his impact on a culture far wider than theatre and film, but its flattering coinage had already become a burden by as early as the mid-1960s (as a recently republished interview with The Paris Review from the era touches on). Stubbornly, his writing fought on regardless against such labels of containment that hinted at mere artifice and cynical mannerism.

Until the publication of Michael Billington's 1996 biography, we never realised just how much Pinter drew personally on his own experience to create comedies of such existential menace. A Jewish boyhood in pre-war Hackney and a post-war life spent in digs as a repertory actor provided much of the starting points for his creations. Similarly, his latterly regular appearances campaigning for human rights and a stunning denunciation of US and British foreign policy in his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech revealed his ingrained forceful use of metaphor and a precise construction of language. Never less than impressive, he was the real deal who left us with a call to arms that was implicit throughout his mature work:

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

Strange News From Other Stars

No good comes from a black hole. Or so I believed. One only has to bring to mind government borrowing requirements or Disney's ill-conceived eponymous 1979 blockbuster. Not even an infinitesimal pin-prick of light can escape from their Stygian depths. They mark the cold end of things. To borrow T.S. Eliot's subtly menacing lines from 'East Coker', 'O dark, dark, dark. They all go into the dark. / The vacant interstellar places, the vacant into the vacant'. So the news scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have proved that a black hole approximately four million times the size of our own sun lies at the centre of our galaxy, was pause for thought. It had long been theorised so, but now it is fact. The sheer scale, even in typically massive astronomical terms, is impressive. And yet, in a self-revealing glass half-empty way, I was seeing the implications for the Milky Way: the eventual cannibalism of any nearby matter as it is drawn in by the terrific forces of gravity. Which was plainly silly. I mean, that would take trillions of years to happen. Long after our sun had consumed the Earth in nuclear fire. Long beyond the life-span of the human race. Or even what the human race becomes. As Robert Frost sensibly proclaims on the matter, I say 'They cannot scare me with their empty spaces'.

My own intimations of mortality and fondness for our stellar backyard momentarily obscured the wonder of the news. Far from being merely agents of destruction, this research (along with a study on early galaxy formation by Durham, Cardiff and Caltech scientists) suggests black holes were integral to the formation of stars and galaxies by allowing high density environments
where atoms could gain substance. Thus from them flowed smoked salmon, the Renaissance, weeping willows, Groucho Marx and Tuesdays. At this time of year, where season and myth collide in a mish-mash of consumerism and festival, this is the really glorious news for all of us to celebrate and marvel at. Demonstrably, as Joni Mitchell sang, 'We are stardust / We are golden'.

Open Rhode

Imagine if Buster Keaton had worn a beanie and studied at Goldsmiths College and you get something of an idea about the works of Robin Rhode. Over on the upper floor of the Hayward Gallery, high above the temporary mausoleum dedicated to Andy Warhol, his first major UK exhibition showcases a visual intelligence, wit, and pathos shared with that enduringly sublime icon of silent cinema.

Like Keaton, Rhode's theatrical works utilise a subversion of medium, but the South African-born artist is more drawn to contemporary political notions of public space and the ephemeral by taking the tradition of fine art into the urban environment and allowing the articulation of the passage of time to interrupt the 'frozen moment of art' (to borrow Hayward director Ralph Rugoff's words).

So not only does Rhode's performance/creation become an intrinsic part of the work itself, but also the Keaton-esque interaction with the two dimensional chalk and charcoal drawings he produces. In series' of photographs and films Rhode is seen drawing his own jazz trio instruments upon a wall and then enthusiastically acting out a musical performance ('The Score'); drawing a candle and gratefully warming himself from the resultant creation ('Candle'); drawing a payphone on a pair of warehouse doors and cunningly making a phone-call ('Nightcall'); performing yo-yo tricks with a chalk representation of its complex movement etched on a concrete wall ('Untitled, Yo-Yo'); difficultly hauling a chalk-drawn anchor along a slipway wall ('Untitled, Anchor'); spinning a vinyl classical record on a chalk-drawn turn-table ('Wheels of Steel'); and, photographed against the ground, illusionary waving a flag composed of bricks ('Stone Flag'). Rhode implicitly comments on street culture, race, and poverty through these playful works with a real sense of ingenuity and freshness. And though Rhode himself abjures such comparisons, as the curator Stephanie Rosenthal aptly puts it, 'he manhandles this knowledge like a light-footed clown with gigantic shoes'.

In more recent works Rhode employs more abstract chalk interpolations into his work (drawing on Russian Constructivism), such as in 'Promenade' which unfolds to passages from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. In form it resembles a beautiful HD stills-projected ballet, in which a solitary masked and suited figure (Rhode himself) is entranced and then contained by diamond-like forms which spread and retreat on the wall behind. Its origins lay in a commission for the Lincoln Center, but its seductive power as a visual rendering of musical structure has thankfully led Rhode to exhibit it more widely. Achingly sublime, it takes the viewer far beyond the quotidian and is easily one of the finest contemporary works of the year.

However, if one thinks Rhode may be moving away from his political roots, a companion show at White Cube called Through The Gate is there to reassure us: exploring the troubling heritage of his native South Africa in pieces such as 'Fast Medium' where an arm made out of charred poplar rises out of a charcoal pile in the act of bowling a cricket ball. Rhode's sense of invention and witty flair shows no sign of letting up. Coming after a rather lacklustre year for contemporary art, these two exhibitions powerfully announce the bold arrival of a major international talent.


Robin Rhode: Who Saw Who
Hayward Gallery,
Southbank Centre,
Belvedere Road,
London SE1 8XX

7th October - 7th December 2008:
Mon-Sun: 10am - 6pm; Fri until 10pm.

Includes entry to Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms


Robin Rhode: Through The Gate
White Cube,
48 Hoxton Square,
London N1 6PB

26th November - 10th January 2009:
Tue-Sat: 10am - 6pm.

Licence to Kill

So. Charles Moore, Noel Edmonds, and an ex-presenter of One Man and His Dog are uniting in a campaign of civil disobedience against the payment of the television licence fee. This, it has to be said, is a supremely moronic and reactionary campaign par excellence. The unfortunate Brand/Ross affair has undoubtedly provided moral ammunition for the deregulating ex-editor of The Daily Telegraph (who famously resigned to spend more time with Margaret Thatcher's family), but the BBC is not merely a provider of entertainment and information content, it is also one of the last unifying hubs of civil society in a increasingly fragmented culture and a fundamental guarantor of political liberty.

Eccentric personal grievances may make up a large part of their motivation, but are Moore et al seriously advocating that the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his corporation-owning ilk be left with completely free reign over the UK's mass media to push their own agenda? No other media organisation beside the BBC has the ethic of political impartiality and broadness of programming outlook so surely etched into its very constitution.

The argument that advertising-funded content is freely available elsewhere whether it is HDTV, radio, or internet based is a fleeting happenstance. Laying aside the sheer variety of public service broadcasting not covered by these other sources, we are living in the pioneer years of the net, digital radio and HDTV. With increasing concerns over bandwidth, the commercial structure of advertising funding and copyright issues, elite enclaves of closed systems and pay-per-view is looking like a frightening possibility.

Digital radio has only survived as a medium in the UK because of the presence of the BBC's ten national stations and its World Service. Channel 4, the only other public service broadcaster, recently ditched their plans for ten new digital radio stations and is struggling with a downward spiral in revenues. Already ITV is taking an axe to its regional news structure. Far from being outdated as an idea and superceded by these new providers, the BBC is actually now more necessary than ever to offer free, wide-ranging, non-partisan services. We cannot afford either politically or culturally to reduce, never mind lose, such a vital institution.

Meh.

Today is good news for everything dismissive, lame or second-rate. 'Meh', the three-letter descriptive standby used by Lisa Simpson for such things not worth expending any more breath, language or time upon, has been accepted for the 30th anniversary of the Collins English Dictionary.

So, meh? Well, once again it displays the enduring flexibility and evolving character of the English Language. Which, let us remember, unlike French is free from ossifying academic regulation and codification.

Plus, the fact that the use of meh has grown democratically, through web articles, blogs, texting, e-mail, and finally the print media, demonstrates that our linguistic culture is just as potently alive and ingenious as it was back in 1538 when Sir Thomas Elyot established the tradition of a dictionary in English. So, yeah.