Poppy

Still I Rise

 

 

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil well
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.


Maya Angelou - a woman who lived life to the full. 'By the time she reached 40 she had been a professional dancer, prostitute, madam, lecturer, activist, singer and editor. She had worked with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X'. (Gary Younge). A woman who was determined to go through life with 'passion, compassion, humour and some style'. A woman who refused to be defeated and who lived with integrity. A woman who showed how to survive rape and racism and who wrote with sincerity and compassion.

The Vanity of Small Differences - Grayson Perry

The Vanity of Small Differences, by Grayson Perry at Birmingham Museum and Gallery.


Grayson Perry designed six tapestries as part of a series he made for Channel 4  'All in the Best Possible Taste'. He believes that 'more than any other factor - more than age, race, religion or sexuality - one's social class determines one's taste'. He travelled all around Britain to find out what was considered good taste among the working class residents of Sunderland, the middle class of Tunbridge Wells and the upper class of the Cotswolds.  He also examined the idea of social mobility between the classes. The tapestries are a modern version of A Rake's Progress, the series of paintings by 18th century artist William Hogarth. Like Hogarth's hero, Tim Rakewell, Perry's hero, comes from the working class, makes enough money to buy himself an upper class life style and then dies a tragic death.

The exhibition is above all about class, the subject that is never mentioned,  but which is nevertheless one of the central tenets of the fabric of our society. What Perry brings home through this exhibition is that we visually signal class difference to each other through consumption: how we dress, what we eat, how we decorate our homes, how we present ourselves in general. Consumerism, the exercise of taste, has become the way we signal our identity, where we belong. Lifestyle is all.

He shows the working class's love of display, comfort, bling and play and their ability to live for the moment. This is something the upper class are unable to do, who cannot live in the moment and who only live in the past. As for the middle class, Perry shows them to be insecure, self-conscious, anxious about their position.

At a time when social mobility has ground to a halt, when the gap between the rich and the poor is bigger than ever, it's important that an artist has articulated the differences that divide us and has shown how individual identity is shaped predominantly by the class we belong to, but also by our consumption of goods, which has become paramount.

The Adoration of the Cage Fighters, 2012

The scene is Tim's great-grandmother's room. The infant Tim reaches for his mother's smartphone - his rival for her attention. She is dressed up ready for a night out with her four friends who have already been on the pre-lash. Two 'Mixed Martial Arts' enthusiasts present icons of tribal identity to the infant: a Sunderland AFC football shirt and a miners' lamp. In the manner of early Christian painting, Tim appears a second time in the work: on the stairs as a four-year old, facing another evening alone in front of a screen.

Although this series of images developed very organically, with little consistent method, the religious reference was here from the start: I hear the echo of paintings such as Andrea Mantegna's The Adoration of the Shepherds, c.1450.

The Agony in the Car Park, 2012

This image is a distant relative of Giovanni Bellini's The Agony in the Garden (c.1465). The scene is a hill outside Sutherland - in the distance is the Stadium of Light. The central figure, Tim's stepfather, a club singer, hints at Matthias Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-16). A naively-drawn shipyard crane stands in for the crucifix, with Tim's mother as Mary below it - once again in the throes of an earthly passion. Tim, in grammar school uniform, blocks his ears squirming in embarrassment. A computer magazine sticks out of his bag, betraying his early enthusiasm for software. To the left, a younger Tim plays happily with his stepfather outside his pigeon cree on the allotments. To the right, young men with their custom cars gather in front of 'Heppies' social club. Mrs T and the call centre manager await a new recruit into the middle classes.

Expulsion from No. 8 Eden Close, 2012

Tim is at University studying computer science, and is going steady with a young woman from Tunbridge Wells. To the left, we see Tim's mother and stepfather, who now live on a private development and own a luxury car. She hoovers the AstroTurf lawn, he returns from a game of golf. They pass through a rainbow, while Jamie Oliver, the god of social mobility, looks down. They are guilty of sin, just like Adam and Eve in Masaccio's The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (c. 1425). To the right a dinner party is just starting. Tim's girlfriend's parents and guests toast the new arrival.

The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal, 2012

Tim is relaxing with his family in the kitchen of his large, rural (second) home. His business partner (in yellow) has just told him that he is now an extremely wealthy man, as they have sold their software business to Richard Branson. On the table is a still life demonstrating the cultural bounty of his affluent lifestyle. To the left, his parents-in-law read and his elder child plays on the rug. To the right, Tim dangles his baby while his wife tweets.

This image includes references to three paintings of The Annunciation by Carlo Crivelli (the vegetables), Matthis Grunewald (his colleague's expression) and Robert Campin (the jug of lilies). The convex mirror and discarded shoes are reminders of that great pictorial display of wealth and status The Arnolfini Portrait (1434) by Jan van Eyck.

 

The Upper Class at Bay, 2012

 

Tim Rakewell and his wife are now in their late forties and their children are grown. They stroll like Mr and Mrs Andrews in Thomas Gainsborough's famous portrait of the landed gentry, (c.1750) in the grounds of their mansion in the Cotswolds. They are new money; they can never become upper-class in their lifetime. In the light of the sunset, they watch the old aristocratic stag with its tattered tweed hide being hunted down by the dogs of tax, social change, upkeep and fuel bills. The old landowning breed is dying down. Tim has his own problems: as a 'fat cat' he has attracted the ire of an 'Occupy-style' protest movement who camp outside his house. The protestor silhouetted between the stag's antlers refers to paintings of the vision of St Hubert, who converted from the leisured life of a nobleman on seeing the vision of a crucifix above the head of a stag.

Lamentation, 2012

The scene is the aftermath of a car accident in an intersection near a retail park. Tim lies dead in the arms of a stranger. His glamorous second wife stands stunned and blood stained amidst the wreckage of his Ferrari. To the right, paramedics prepare to remove his body. To the left, police and fire fighters record and clear the crash scene. Onlookers take photos with their camera phones to download on the internet. His dog lies dead. The contents of his wife's expensive handbag spill out over a copy of Hello magazine that features her and Tim on the cover.

At the bottom of Rogier van der Weyden's Lamentation, which inspired this image, is a skull: I have substituted it with a smashed smartphone, which refers back to the first tapestry in the series, where Tim reaches for his mother's phone. This scene also echoes the final painting of Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (1733) where Tom Rakewell dies naked in The Madhouse.




Sources:

Grayson Perry's commentary on each tapestry was taken from the information given out by the gallery.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/08/grayson-perry-tapestries-class-taste

Hidcote

 

 

Hidcote Manor Garden, in the North Cotswolds.

 

An Arts and Crafts garden, this is one of the most beautiful gardens I have ever been in. Lawrence Johnston began to create the garden in 1907 and over the space of 30 years he transformed a field containing just a few trees to a magnificent garden. It consists of at least 12 outdoor rooms

which are colourful and intricately designed, connected by a maze of narrow paved pathways. Added to that are great open vistas, a wood, a large section of 'wilderness', a kitchen garden, an orchard, great lawns, a tennis court, a bathing pool, a pond, and so much more.

 

The first time we visited was in the middle of winter and it was a delight then - but this week's visit was something else: everything was bursting with colour and it was magnificent.



 

 

 

 

By the side of the house, near the White Garden and the Maple Garden.



 

 

The Maple Garden, and in the distance one of the stone thatched cottages that were once home to the gardeners.

One of the maples, the copper colour bright in the sunshine

One of the delights of the many rooms is that there are so many openings from which to look through to another of the rooms

 

 

 



The tulips in the Old Garden were in full bloom

The honey coloured Cotswold stone always a delight

 

 

 



another look at those tulips



 

 

Everything is connected with paved pathways and seeing through to the next room is always a pleasure

 

 

 



a magnificent rhododendron

 

The Circle, a symphony of blue and lilac

 



 

 

 

 

and the iris are stunning

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

peeping through

some open spaces too, in contrast to the intimacy of the 'rooms'

 

The entrance to the Bathing Pool section framed by topiary of two birds

 

 

 

 



 

the steps down to the Bathing Pool - every single detail is carefully thought out in this garden

 

 

 



 

The Bathing Pool

 

 

 

 

looking closer

 

 

 

looking at the Bathing Pool through the hedge opening - so much in this garden is framed

a delightful little garden house

 



with modern murals

 

 



 

old tiles

and more modern murals

 



 

The Poppy Garden

 

 

 

 

The Upper Stream Garden

 

 



Moving on to the Central Stream Garden

 

over the bridge

 

 



 

 

The spectacular wisteria covering the Tool Shed

one more photograph

 

 

 



walking out of the Tool Shed I found myself under and inside the wisteria

the scent was heady

 

The Lily Pool which is by the Plant House

 



 

 

 

One of the four wisteria trees at the end of the Long Borders

 



 

 

 

The Orchard

 



 

 

 



and then we entered The Wood

 

 



 

 

The Beech Allee

 



 

 

 

peaceful and cool and we seemed to be the only people there on a hot and very busy day

 



 

 

The Great Lawn, and I loved the curved line of the hedge

beautiful, colourful  borders

 

 

 



 

 



The Stilt Garden, leading

 

 

 

 

 

 

on to fields with the most spectacular views of the Cotswold countryside

 

 



 

 

 

looking closer

 

 

The Pillar Garden

The Rock Bank

 

 



 

The Long Walk

 



 

 

 

which lead to the edge of the garden and more spectacular views of the Cotswolds

The Wilderness

 

The Wilderness still

 



 

 

between the Hudrangea Corner and the Central Stream Garden

Mrs Winthrop's Garden

a round stepping stone over the stream leading on to

 

The Lime Bower

 



 

 

some colour

retracing our steps

 

another look at The Long Walk

 

 



 

 

and then we found ourselves  in The Bathing Pool Garden again, and noticed this lone Himalayan Poppy

a stunning flower

 

 

and a stunning blue.

 

 

 

 

 

and when Ken went to the shop, I stood under the dogwood, or handkerchief tree.

 

'This place is a jungle of beauty; a jungle controlled by a single mind; a jungle never allowed to deteriorate into a mere jungle, but always kept in bounds by a master hand': Vita Sackville-West.

 

 

 

A long post? Absolutely. And yet I have shown only a fraction of this extraordinary garden.