Ian Beesley

 I was ill for part of last week. Just a heavy cold I think, although to be honest every time I have taken a self-administered Covid test over the last couple of years I have seriously wondered whether I was doing the bloody thing properly. I eased myself back into the land of the living by going to an exhibition of photographs and I shall be easing myself back into the land of blogging by writing about it.

Bradford-born Ian Beesley is currently the subject of a career retrospective exhibition at Salt's Mill. That career started at the same time as I was doing my first degree at Bradford University in the mid 1970s and there was much to bring back memories of the time. I was fortunate enough to be guided round the exhibition by the photographer himself and the background information he provided added greatly to the whole experience. As I'm taking things slowly I shall mention just one of his stories.

In 1997 to celebrate the centenary of becoming a city, Bradford council commissioned Beesley to take portraits of one hundred Bradfordians ranging in age from the newborn to the very old. He went to visit one chap of 104 in a nursing home and the manager said that she was pleased he was there as the individual in question had only had two other visitors all year and they were both foreign gentlemen and so didn't really count as far as she was concerned. After taking the photograph Beesley asked about the other visitors. "Well," came the reply "Bert always visits me when he's in the country". Upon questioning it came out that the old chap had been on the ground staff at Maine Road, and that the Bert in question was Bert Trautmann, the German POW who became Man City goalkeeper and played much of the 1956 FA Cup Final with a broken neck. Rather impressed, Beesely then asked about the other visitor. He, it turned out, had been from the French embassy. The old chap had served on the Western Front and his visitor had come to present him with the Légion d'honneur. I think that story - and the manager's part in it - neatly sums up what's wrong with the attitude of the British to the rest of the world. I'd like to be able to say that things have improved in the last twenty-five years, but we all know that the opposite is true.

Anyway, it's an excellent exhibition, and there's a rather fine Hockney piece currently on the display in the next room as well.

In the Lands of the North

"In the land of the North, where the Black Rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long, the Men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale..."

I have at last been to the Noggin the Nog exhibition. The person I arranged to go with a couple of weeks ago was taken ill rather suddenly; by which I mean that I called round to pick her up only to find her being carried out into an ambulance. It all rather put me in mind of my own trips to A&E back in 2016. Fortunately she has made a full recovery and so we went off to Cartwright Hall to see their exhibition on Smallfilms. 

It isn't a very big display and perhaps inevitably has more exhibits relating to the puppet shows than the stop frame animation. There is one of the 'real' Bagpusses - the other appears to be in the Rupert the Bear Museum in Canterbury - a number of Clangers plus the Iron Chicken, and Mr & Mrs Pogle (*). One thing I never knew before was that Clangers were developed from characters who first appeared in an episode of Noggin the Nog; one is never too old to learn something.

They did have the camera with which Noggin and Ivor the Engine were filmed compete with a trigger made from Meccano to allow one frame to be shot at a time, plus a strange spoked measuring tool that allowed Oliver Postgate to move the drawings by the same amount for each frame he shot. But it was the paintings and drawings of Peter Firmin that stole the show for me, both the exquisite backgrounds and the huge quantity of cutouts for each character: close, medium and distance; at different angles; a range of facial expressions; limbs in various positions; etc.

It certainly took me back. Ivor the Engine was on ITV and we watched the BBC in our house, but Noggin was right up my street. One thing I didn't pick up at the time was that Nogbad, the villain trying to steal the throne, was Noggin's uncle; you can't get away from Shakespeare can you? I'm also pleased to note that Groliffe the dragon was an accountant of sorts. There are many Smallfilms resources on the interweb, but make sure you don't miss this one. Be warned though, the promised Hordes of the Things army lists don't seem to exist.

Also on at Cartwright Hall at the moment is an exhibition of a century of Bradford painters. As well as the inevitable Hockney this also included  Edward Wadsworth, member of the Vorticists, and, much to my surprise, a painting by David Oxtoby of Catfish Keith, a version of which is on the cover of the blues singer's first album.

(*) Amos Pogle, the man who said "I'll be respectable when I'm dead Mrs Pogle, until then I'll shout and sing as much as I like!" is, as can be seen from the photo, a bit of a role model of mine.

Progress Industry Humanity

The town in which I live is part of Leeds and for the most part that's where I go for entertainment and intellectual stimulation. However, I live on the border with Bradford and this weekend has seen me attend events celebrating two of its most distinguished sons.

On Saturday I made one of my infrequent returns to the University of Bradford, the place where I took my first degree, on this occasion for a talk on the time theories of J.B. Priestley. I won't attempt to reproduce what was discussed, which you would be correct in interpreting to mean that I didn't fully understand it. There were names bandied about that I'd never heard of (J.W. Dunne, Ouspensky), haven't read (Proust - shameful but true) or regard as complete charlatans (Myers and Briggs). Still, the main point at issue was that Priestley was a first rate writer, is unjustly overlooked and was ahead of his time. His influence can clearly be seen on novelists such as Borges and Burgess and on playwrights like Stoppard and Ayckbourn, and he was an early explorer of concepts later seen in works as diverse as E.T., Catch-22, Groundhog Day, Sliding Doors and The Purple Rose of Cairo to name just a few. The speakers recommended a range of works which apparently illustrate his interest in the possible circularity of time, but I have chosen to buy 'The 31st of June' on the basis that the panel said it was very funny. I shall report back. I also have to mention that I rather regret not having also been to the session before ours, which featured lots of brightly clothed Nigerians playing drums.

Today saw celebrations to mark the 80th birthday of David Hockney. The weather was nice, a big crowd turned up, there was a wide choice of food (I went for Tilapia and Jollof rice, perhaps still regretting missing out on the Nigerian drumming) and loud music; judging by the playlist DH is a fervent disco fan. There was even a large birthday cake representing his large work Le Plongeur, which is the cornerstone of the excellent new Hockney Gallery at Bradford's Cartwright Hall.

The other notable feature was a Hockneyfication Station where those with a more frivolous nature than your bloggist could be transformed into lookalikes of the great man.

Another Op'nin', Another Show

And so to the theatre. Opera North are putting on 'Kiss Me, Kate' thereby allowing me to continue my autumn of Shakespeare at one remove.

 "Brush up your Shakespeare
Start quoting him now
Brush up your Shakespeare
And the women you will wow"

At least according to Cole Porter; I couldn't possibly comment. It's not the sort of show I'd have gone to see were it not being put on by Opera North, but I thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless; especially, and to my surprise, the dancing. The company are well known for occasionally updating lyrics to include topical references, but I think the pig's head that appears at one point was probably in the design before the emergence of swinegate (as it surely ought to be known).

In other news I have been to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the Wave of Poppies, which is rather lovely. It originally formed part of the core at the Tower of London around which was added one ceramic poppy for each of the fallen. It suits its current setting very well and I can understand why it has proved so popular an attraction. YSP's permanent exhibition includes the work of Sophie Ryder, and one of her very large hares also currently stands outside Cartwright Hall, the City of Bradford's art gallery.

And, as it happens, I have also been there, accompanied by the elder Miss Epictetus. One of the current temporary displays is the Bradford Open, an exhibition of local artists. My daughter and I were in agreement with the judges and, even more oddly, each other. I particularly liked the enormous painting of Zeus on multi-layered reclaimed cardboard. The permanent collection is fairly wide ranging, moving from the sort of high Victorian bourgeois stuff endowed by nineteenth century wool barons through to Lowery, Lichtenstein and Warhol. And then there is Hockney, as always in Bradford, including my own favourite Le Plongeur. You will recall that Tory and Liberal Councillors recently tried to sell all of the above mentioned works of art plus many others, on the basis that only rich people should have access to art.

The philanthropic founders of the collection - Tories and Liberals to a man - must be turning in their graves.

"This is her picture as she was"

This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
Thy voice and hand shake still,--long known to thee
By flying hair and fluttering hem,--the beat
Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
How passionately and irretrievably,
In what fond flight, how many ways and days! 

- Dante Gabriel Rossetti

As you know, this blog doesn't just write itself. So a few days after a brief burst of 'Lady of Shalott' and some Dante I went to Cartwright Hall in Bradford to see their exhibition of studies that Dante Gabriel Rossetti did of Jane Morris, wife of William and the fulcrum of one of those odd set-ups that the Victorians seem to have all carried on behind closed doors. It's well worth seeing, as are the other two temporary exhibitions there at the moment.

The first, a travelling show from the British Museum, is basically just one turban, but what a turban. It's a Sikh fortress turban from the nineteenth century with a small amount of background material and other artifacts. I was sorry to see that I had missed lectures earlier in the month on Sikh troops in the First World War and one in conjunction with the Royal Armouries on Sikh arms and armour.

The third exhibition was actually the best, a number of lithographs and prints from the city's own collection. There was inevitably, and quite rightly, some Hockney, in this case 'The Rake's Progress' a series of sixteen prints from the early sixties. There are also some colourful and amusing Glenn Baxter's and a selection of prints specially commissioned to celebrate the 2012 Olympics including works by Tracey Emin and Chris Ofili. Perhaps of most interest to wargamers would be a dozen small prints by Sir William Rothenstein entitled 'Landscapes of the War', the war in this question being that of 1914-18 because Rothenstein served as an official war artist in both world wars. However, those that I'd personally like on my walls are thirteen Lowry's from the mid 1960s.