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The days are getting shorter, the nights are drawing in, and it’s almost time for a fat man dressed in red to come tumbling down your chimney. Cherwell Broadcasting walks you through the most fun festivities in Oxford, perfect for the Christmas period!
The Vice-Chancellor (VC) of Oxford University was the third highest paid Russell Group VC in 2015-16, new figures reveal.
The total remuneration paid to the former VC Andrew Hamilton, and his successor Louise Richardson, who took over the post in January 2016, was £442,000.
This sees an increase of one per cent on the previous year’s salary, but an overall decrease in the total earnings from £462,000—including pensions and benefits—which had made Hamilton the highest paid UK Vice-Chancellor in 2014-15, according to an earlier University and College Union (UCU) report.
The Oxford UCU criticised the news, noting that staff at Oxford University have some of the highest levels of additional employment and work casualisation in the country.
The figures were revealed in analysis by Times Higher Education (THE), which found that on average, leaders of the UK’s Russell Group universities take home almost six per cent more than they did two years ago.
During the same period, university staff took a one per cent increase in pay, staging a two-day walkout in May.
Oxford University was eager to point out that the increase in Richardson’s and Hamilton’s joint earnings for the 2015–2016 financial year, which amounted to £384,000, was in line with a pay rise for all University staff.
A University spokesperson told Cherwell: “The Vice-Chancellor’s salary for the seven months to 31 July, 2016 was £204,000. She received no benefits. Pro-rata, the present VC’s salary represents a one per cent increase on her predecessor’s salary for 2014-15. This is in line with the one per cent pay rise received by all University staff.”
Louise Richardson, who had previously served as the Vice-Chancellor at St Andrews University, became the Oxford VC on 1 January 2016, with a promise to “tackle elitism”.
News of the nation-wide pay increase for Vice Chancellors has been criticised by the University and College Union (UCU).
The President of the Oxford UCU branch, Dr Garrick Taylor, told Cherwell: “It has unfortunately come as no surprise that VC pay has again increased so much while university staff have seen consistent real terms pay cuts, as universities have being doing this year on year.
“All over the country professional and academic staff in universities are struggling as rent and house prices go up but pay is depressed. The situation is even worse in Oxford, which has among the highest rent and house prices in the country, and we are increasingly seeing staff taking on additional employment on top of their already demanding roles. On top of this Oxford has amongst the highest level of university staff casualisation in the country, meaning a lack of job security on top of real terms pay cuts.
“We hope that this year the universities will attempt to redress the balance and give staff an above inflation pay rise in the same manner that they have been giving their VCs.”
However, the Russell Group Director General, Dr Wendy Piatt, defended the pay increases, telling THE that “many vice chancellors have accepted only very modest increases” and that pay levels were set by independent committees that include “expert representatives from outside the sector”.
The Vice-Chancellor’s office has been contacted for comment.
I’m a big Beatles fan, so when I heard about this exhibition—which is accompanied by 1960s music playing through a pair of headphones—I thought, why not. I get to walk around listening to the Beatles while reading about hippies.
The first room is a somewhat vague introduction to the political and cultural tensions and artistic achievements of the first half of the 60s—a couple of things I hadn’t seen or read about before, but nothing particularly surprising or fascinating.
In the next room, I’m surrounded by mannequins sporting various 60s outfits, some from psychedelic London boutiques like Granny Takes a Trip. So far, so average. There are, however, some more intriguing sections on counter-cultural publications, radio stations, clubs and ‘happenings’. I’ve heard some of these names before (Radio Caroline, The International Times, Fifth Estate), but it’s inspiring to read how these initiatives were set up unofficially and democratically: entertainment and news reporting by the people and for the people, all before the internet really revolutionised and democratised the media.
This is followed by the section on music. Now this was the real artistic revolution. They have the handwritten lyrics to ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, possibly the most important piece of psychedelic music ever to be recorded. However, I want them to do more than just tell me about the inspiration for the lyrics. Give us information on the music itself, the revolution in the recording studio which produced it, show us some old studio equipment… or am I just too much of a Beatles nerd?
The next room marks a change in the exhibition’s topics. I’m suddenly in a much angrier space, surrounded by politics, protest, rebellion and war. Again, there’s so much to look at, but the cluttered and colourful collection has become oppressive. The increasing psychedelic bombardment has now been inverted and has become something frightening.
The key to the success of this part of the exhibition lies in its inclusion of revolutions and rebellions from outside the English-speaking world. This includes a powerful exhibit: a shopping list scribbled down by rebels during the May 1968 protests in France. For all the mass propaganda and revolutionary art, this list of basic foodstuffs and stationery reminds me that the people involved were really just that: people. While I’m reading about ‘Mai 68’, my headset plays French protest songs which I’ve never heard before, such as Léo Ferré’s haunting ‘Paris, je ne t’aime plus’. At last they are using the headphones effectively, playing something interesting, lesser-known and politically charged, rather than simply regurgitating the same old hits which we all knew already.
The last song I hear in this section is the angry, punk-rock ‘Macht Kaputt, Was Euch Kaputt Macht’ (i.e. ‘Destroy What Destroys You’) by the Berlin anarchist poets Ton, Steine, Scherben (Clay, Stone, Shards), an appropriate attack on capitalist consumerism before I move into the next room, which is about precisely that. Placing the section on consumer products after the ‘revolution room’ is a masterstroke, for it makes the twee advertisements on show seem ludicrously shallow and saccharine.
I then walk through into the biggest room yet: the Woodstock room complete with stage, AstroTurf, and bean bags for lounging and listening. There are some great items on the stage like Roger Daltrey’s shawl, Mama Cass’s kaftan, one of Keith Moon’s drum kits, and Hendrix’s jacket and guitars. But I can’t understand why these items weren’t displayed in the ‘music’ section—it feels like the exhibition is repeating itself.
‘Records and Rebels’ ends with a room on ‘Communes and the West Coast’, containing details on environmentalists and their projects. This is of course a topic which remains very relevant, but the space does feel a little underwhelming after the ‘revolution room’. I walk out to Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, the title of which has been used as one of the exhibition’s structuring catch-phrases, with signs reading, for example, “Imagine… students feeling so angry they want to overthrow the government”. This is feeble at best, patronising at worst. Yet, though I groan at Lennon’s song being played un-ironically as I leave, it evinces the keystone in the legacy of that era: optimism, and the belief that change really could be brought about. It’s a feeling that is hard to recapture at the start of 2017.
When I arrived at Oxford in October, I was certain that I wanted to be involved in the University’s drama scene. As an English and French student and someone who had taken part in numerous school productions, I was eager to submerge myself in the University’s theatrical culture. I wasn’t sure what to expect, with nothing to go on but vague whisperings of something called ‘Cuppers’, and a mysterious place known only as the ‘O’Reilly’.
My first encounter with the Oxford theatre scene was the production of Anything Goes that showed at the Playhouse in October. The show was stunningly professional, beyond what I imagined possible for a student-led musical—from the superb comedy acting and orchestra, to the clean, impactful production design. Shortly after, I saw Guys and Dolls at the O’Reilly (to which I’d now been introduced). Although the grimy aesthetic and terrifying gambling sequence in the second act set it apart from Anything Goes, both musicals were united by a feeling of quality, care, and professionalism.
It wasn’t long before I too was drawn into the whirlpool of drama: at the beginning of November, I was roped in to help with The Nether at the Playhouse, a provocative drama about paedophilia and the possibilities presented by virtual reality. As the sound op, my part in the production was relatively small, yet the experience impressed upon me how different Oxford’s theatrical culture is. At school, the teachers led the artistic direction of the plays.
Here, however, students dominate proceedings, taking control at every level of the creative process. I suddenly found myself yearning to try out roles I hadn’t even known existed before arriving here. Moreover, these shows are not just good ‘for student productions’: they need no such qualification. They are just good productions, which survive on their artistic merit regardless of whether the cast and crew happen to be students.
It seemed inevitable, with my rapid assimilation into Oxford’s theatrical subculture, that I would take part in Cuppers. There’s something inherently gratifying about putting on your show in a real performance space: performing a play that we put together from the ground up to a real audience was one of the most rewarding theatrical experiences I’ve ever had. Cuppers was a crystallisation of everything that I have come to love about Oxford’s theatrical scene, a microcosm of its best qualities: the students are in charge and they have free reign to make shows which reflect what they care about.
This first term at Oxford has been a baptism of fire. Everything seems to run a hundred times faster than normal—I’ve often struggled to catch my breath amidst the maelstrom of work, socialising, and extracurricular activities. At first, drama here seemed just as intimidating. There was such a barrage of shows and an overwhelming number of opportunities that I felt certain I’d never be able to find my feet. But now that I’ve got a taste of what Oxford has to offer, I’m going to try my best to be a part of it. As breathless and intimidating as it can appear, I want nothing more than to see what Oxford’s thriving theatrical community has to throw at us this year.
Living With the Lights On offers intimate insight into a horribly isolating illness. The one-man play at the Young Vic is based on the life of its actor and writer, Mark Lockyer, and in particular his struggles with bipolar disorder. Lockyer’s manic depression has had a significant impact on his life since 1995, when he had his first major breakdown while playing Mercutio for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“I couldn’t get out of bed,” he recalls. “I was convinced I’d die if I went back on stage.” Despite its quick wit, the play feels personal and honest. Tea and biscuits are provided at the beginning, with Lockyer helping hand them out and chatting to the audience, pointing out where we can hang up our coats and even taking them over for us. There is no sign of him assuming a role as he begins his extended monologue—rather he is chatting to us, sharing his story.
The set comprises of the table for tea, and objects such as a ladder strewn about seemingly randomly, creating the impression that he is spontaneously telling a story using what he has to hand, rather than showcasing a rehearsed creation. He assumes the mannerisms of the people he describes in a slightly caricatured way, as we might when telling an anecdote to a friend. Movingly, the play ends with a conversation with his mother, where she tells him that people understanding his experiences depends on him.
Lockyer does indeed do an excellent job of making us understand, so far as we can, and his dedication to the task is impressive. The stamina required to deliver such a lengthy and energetic monologue must be immense, and his determination to share his experiences is palpable, as sweat drenches his shirt and brow. Personifying his illness as a brash, American and murderous version of the devil, and leaping between characters and moods, the energy of his performance is addictive yet unsettling, utterly manic.
The play is riddled with rapid and unpredictable emotional switches, guiding us through his experiences of bipolar disorder not only through narration of events, but through playing with our response in a frighteningly erratic way. At first these unexpected changes of pace and mood elicit laughs, seeming quirky and engineered for comic effect, but over time they become far more disconcerting. By the time Lockyer pauses midway through setting fire to his ex’s flat to jovially make a cup of tea, nobody is laughing.
We are shown a man who is completely out of control, drawn into his manic depressive nightmare. His hare-brained exploits such as spontaneous flights abroad, and playing a saxophone centre-stage in a production of Romeo and Juliet, are certainly entertaining, but despite the frequent laughter, we are left principally with a sense of spiralling, frenetic helplessness. Despite the fact that Lockyer addresses the audience directly, we find that we still cannot trust his narration, with vital events such as suicide attempts only revealed by their aftermath. This contributes to the overpowering sense of Mark being out of control. A particularly touching moment comes when Mark observes that prison it is the first places he has felt safe in years.
Lockyer offers ambivalent insight into mental healthcare. He draws frustrated laughs from the audience with his mocking impression of a doctor who can’t even get out the word “suicide”, and with a painfully accurate running gag where there are never enough beds in the psychiatric ward, wherever he ends up. Ultimately, however, he goes on to attribute his recovery and return to the stage to the hard work of mental health professionals, who simply would not let him decide that he’s “evil” rather than ill.
Living With the Lights On certainly doesn’t shy away from the darkest sides of bipolar, addressing suicide attempts and damage done to others. As Lockyer himself notes regarding the disorder: “It’s vicious and nasty—people’s lives are wrecked forever with this illness.” However, the play seems finally optimistic, discussing how Lockyer himself came to be able to manage his illness. It offers a perspective on mental illness that seeks to tackle stigma and promote discourse: what we ultimately remember most is Mark’s final wish to be understood.
Say what you like about 2016, but it has been a massive year for Disney’s animation. With Zootopia and Finding Dory both breaking $1 billion at the box office, the pressure really was on the brand-new addition to the Disney Princesses: Moana.
Moana focuses on the titular character, voiced by newcomer Auli’i Cravalho, who is the daughter of a South Pacific Island Chief. But, when her island is threatened by an ancient curse, Moana must set sail to try and find the demigod Maui, voiced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, to help her on her quest.
Disney has also cast some of New Zealand’s top talent, featuring Rachel House (Hunt for the Wilderpeople) and Temuera Morrison (Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones), showing that casting locally really works. Jermaine Clement also makes an appearance, proving that his vocals are not limited to Flight of Conchords, but are also well-suited to upbeat OK GO-style tunes that will absolutely stick in your head.
With the rest of the cast starring singers such as Nicole Scherzinger, and music composed by the massive award winner Lin Manuel Miranda, it is no wonder that the soundtrack has been listened to a few million times on Spotify. Miranda is currently holding the 2016 Tony Award for Best Musical (as well as ten other Tonys) for Hamilton, and thanks to Moana, Miranda is well on his way to becoming the third person to achieve the prestigious“PEGOT” (winning the Pulitzer, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards). With just that elusive Oscar left to go, Miranda has a pretty good chance with the ballad ‘How Far I’ll Go’, which has already been nominated for a Golden Globe.
The song You’re Welcome is so perfectly suited to Dwayne Johnson – easily the closest thing we have to a demigod on this earth – that it may as well be called ‘Can you smell what Maui’s cooking?’. Dwayne Johnson, who usually plays his characters very seriously (See Fast and Furious 7 and The Tooth Fairy), really has fun in his role as Maui. His seamless combination of cheeky and cocky is entertaining for adult viewers, and his physicality imparts the perfect amount of slapstick for the younger members of the audience.
It’s also worth noting that Moana is well researched. For example, tattoos feature in the some of the island scenes, and lots of Pacific islands place a strong impetus on tattoos to convey a sense of heritage and ancestry and to show where you are originally from. The traditional method of navigation that Maui teaches Moana is also fairly accurate; sensing the swell of the ocean and mapping the stars is a conventional method for Pacific Islanders, and it’s nice to see Disney accurately and respectfully portraying Polynesian culture.
Although not necessarily festive, Moana is an ideal film to see with the family this vacation. Not only is it fun and bright, but it has some really moving scenes to warm your heart this winter.
A punctuated set of piano chords, the sharp injection of an electric guitar, before the music retreats just a little, and a husky male soloist implores: “Come on, come on/ Put your hands into the fire”. So begins the 2004 single ‘Into the Fire’, by Cornish indie-rock quartet Thirteen Senses. Loyal viewers, who number in the millions, of the American medical drama Grey’s Anatomy have heard this beginning a remarkable four times over the last twelve years—remarkable, because the song itself only peaked at number 35 in the UK, product of a band which has never even cracked the top ten since the release of their first EP 14 years ago.
What, then, is the resonance that those three and a half minutes have acquired? Why would music producers on one of the most successful American dramas in recent history employ and re-employ four times over such a relatively obscure tune in the face of a wealth of adaptable pop songs? Can we even credit the repetition of such a song with meaning to any but the most committed Grey’s or Thirteen Senses fan, given the years which elapse between uses?
Perhaps it’s merely that the song is clearly stunning, on first and subsequent listens. It’s a soulful, soft, imperative kind of song, which celebrates both extremes and subtleties across the passage of two lines (like “From Samaritan to sin/ And it’s waiting on the air”). It is perhaps the awareness of how indelibly a song may colour a scene and a scene may colour a song so that neither may ever be fully extricated from the other, no matter how many episodes, years or songs shuffle past.
The first time the song is used it serves as the coda to the pilot episode. ‘Into the Fire’ sounds out as the protagonist, Meredith Grey, fulfils the promise of the episode (and of the series title) and assists in operating on the brain of her first patient. Everything that would come to define the success of Grey’s Anatomy—the operating room, the closing monologue reflecting on her identity as a surgeon, even the catchphrase “It’s a beautiful day to save lives”, as espoused by her love interest and attending surgeon, Derek Shepherd—is present in this moment, and it is all marked by this perfect, subdued anthem of a song by a little group from Penzance.
Seven years later, ‘Into the Fire’ is reused as the penultimate song in alternate reality episode ‘If/Then’. In an episode where so much is changed, where relationships, deaths, and surgical positions have all been uncomfortably altered, it serves as the unconscious anchor to a beginning as simple as surgery, the relationship between Derek and Meredith and as the musical epiphany in which all that is wrong appears to root itself back to the Grey’s Anatomy we have become used to over eight seasons.
The demanding piano beginning is almost uncomfortably stretched out, the same repeating chords played over and over, until Derek’s wife confesses her infidelity to the introduction of that vibrant electric guitar. “Put your hands into the fire”, the song commands, capturing the terrifying, exhilarating, everyday existence of these surgeons, just as the scene shifts to Meredith and best friend, Cristina, together attempting to revive a drug addict in the Emergency Room.
In the latter years of the show, specifically seasons eleven and twelve, an era in which Netflix, Amazon Prime, and multitudes of illegal platforms have rendered streaming episodes and marathoning television series far more accessible in a shorter timespan than ever before, surely there must be a greater awareness of the lens under which these episodes are viewed, the numerous times each may be rewatched, and thus serve as a further justification for making these connections. In the most shocking scene to the veteran viewers who first watched Meredith and Derek in the pilot lock eyes in an operating room over ‘Into the Fire’, Derek Shepherd quietly dies on an operating table as an elegiac, almost soporific cover, sung by Erin McCarley, plays, and bids farewell to a character who first defined the song, surgery, and an enduring romantic relationship in the context of this television show.
In a circular moment, the song is reused just a year later, in its original form—no cover version, no elongated beginnings—as the patient under the knife in the song’s first invocation returns, eleven years later, for another brain surgery. Using this song with flashbacks of Derek, with Derek’s sister operating, with Derek’s name being invoked a season after his death: this is clearly meant to underline the grief of this loss again.
More than that, however, it is a reminder of what the song first proved in 2005: Meredith, while rushing her current patient to a lifesaving surgery, for a brief second catches the eye of her very first patient, on the way to a different surgery. That brief glance to the thrum of ‘Into the Fire’ carries the weight of eleven years of history, of loss, achievement, joy, and despair on the small screen.
Just as the song is now truly a veteran to the series, so too is Meredith an accomplished, veteran attending surgeon, a fulfilment of all that began eleven seasons ago. Grey’s Anatomy truly demonstrates an awareness with just one song of the power of music to invite recollection, to signal change, to develop wordlessly what even good writing and good acting cannot fully explicate.
Professor Stephen Hawking, the celebrated physicist and cosmologist, is to give a free public lecture on black holes at the Oxford University Mathematics Institute on Wednesday January 18 at 5pm.
Spaces were made available today and demand is expected to be very high. The Mathematics Institute will be podcasting the lecture live.
He will speaking about black holes in the inaugural Roger Penrose lecture at the Royal Observatory Quarter on Woodstock Road.
Prof Hawking is currently Director of Research at the Cambridge University Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.
The Professor, now 74, was diagnosed with the motor neurone disease ALS at the age of 21.
It will be the first lecture in a new series offered by the Mathematics Institute, in celebration of the lifetime’s contribution of Professor Roger Penrose.
It was alongside Penrose that Hawking showed that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity implied space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes.
The lecture will be Hawking’s second address in Oxford in the space of three months, having spoken at the Union in November.
His speech there – tickets for which sold out in minutes – warned that humans will die out within 1,000 years unless mankind leaves earth.
People can email [email protected] to register to attend the event, and visit maths.ox.ac.uk for more details.
Oxford University have been contacted for for comment.
The first break of the academic year, the winter vac is not only the opportunity to rediscover the comfort of life at home after eight weeks of essay pressure and pesto panini. As you sit back for the first time in a while, you might also remember where you left your camera before leaving for Oxford, or give in to the temptation of a shiny new box of pencils you got for Christmas.
Whether pinteresque or picturesque like Jessica Voicu’s views of the Lake District, the homecoming brings together familiar images and new influences. The start of a new year tops off this dialogue between the old and the new, the common and the unknown. Meanwhile, these few weeks are enough to get on a flight to somewhere warmer than Oxford, or attempt to shred this year’s rather dry slopes.
During this time, your eyes are working as hard as they do during term, and we’d all like to bring our sofas, cats, family—and even the Alps back to Oxford with us. So what if, when you opened the first Cherwell of Hilary, you found your own sketch of the holiday coast or your close-up photo of the Christmas tree in the paper?
To participate, send your vac art to [email protected] by Tuesday of 0th week.
What if I’d rather stick to my pen and notepad?
If you’re interested in art but find your abilities limited to stickmen, you can still send your exhibition reviews, reflexions or interview requests to the Visuals team. We’ll be happy to read your pitches!
I was apprehensive about visiting the RA’s recent exposition of Abstract Expressionism (or ‘Ab Ex’ as they rather trendily called it). An art form which avoids solidity of interpretation at all costs seems fertile ground for pseuds. I could just see them in their berets standing in front of meaningless splodges, musing over adjectives like “gritty” and “dispossessive”. The exhibition publicity campaign did little to allay my fears: a particularly impenetrable section from a Jackson Pollock painting overlayed with the command Experience Abstract Expressionism. No, I don’t want to experience anything; I want to know what these random squiggles mean! Still, given that this was allegedly one of the most important art movements of the twentieth century, I though there must be something to it. So, off I toddled to Leicester Square, hoping to be impressed. And, to some extent, I was.
The Royal Academy’s traditional introductory display was, as usual, excellent. A series of abstract David Smith sculptures stood outside in the court, arranged so that their respective forms seemed to respond to each other. Though abstract, these pieces were undeniably appealing. Nevertheless, they were still clear, sold blocks of reality, tangible even to the most obstinate viewer, and I didn’t feel they expressed very much. It would take me more of this to prove Ab Ex’s validity.
The first room covered early or transitional work by the artists under examination – mostly moody portraits and dark, nightmarish compositions. The focal hanging was clearly Pollock’s Male and Female in which Picasso’s influence was unmistakable and the exposition of ideas accessible. I felt just about at home here. David Smith’s Letter sculpture displayed in the centre was truly brilliant. He drew the form of a handwritten letter into the third dimension through consistent yet grotesque twists of metal, which succeeded in making the familiar thoroughly strange.
Then the problems began. The next display concentrated on Pollock’s later revolutionary ‘pouring’ technique in which paint is splashed onto the canvas from a height. These, along with Franz Kline’s black streaks intermingling with a white background, might be described as Action Art. In this field, striking as these works were, I confess that I found little value. The marks function supposedly as frozen performance pieces, not representing anything ‘physical’, but rather, like a long exposure photograph, a snapshot of the artist’s gestures during composition. Artistic self-referentiality is all very well, but it only seems justified if you’ve got something interesting to say through the work itself, otherwise the artist identifies him/herself as the most important thing in the artistic process and becomes utterly self-absorbed.
I soon realised that my favourite work so far, de Kooning’s Pink Angels, had been painted as a reaction to an earlier, thoroughly representative, work by Titian. The two Pollock paintings I liked the most – Mural and Blue Poles, also his most famous – were his most representative, overlaid with recognisable imagery. I was deriving much more enjoyment from works grounded in something figurative I could latch onto: disembodied parts of the female form, shadowy striding figures, even a series of blue sticks – just give me something! I was becoming less and less convinced of the value of abstraction.
But in the Rothko room, I had an epiphany. His richly coloured rectangles were undoubtedly some of the most abstract in the exhibition, yet I felt totally engaged emotionally and intellectually. His work wasn’t grounded in external reality; it created its own reality, held together by consistency of form. Accessible at first sight, the colours of his shapes were layered to give them an ethereal, almost holy quality. If you’ve never had the opportunity properly to contemplate the word façade, I suggest doing so in front of a Rothko painting. He reduces concealing and revealing to a single instant, expressed in the simplest of terms.
Moving to view other ‘colour field’ artists Reinhardt and Newman, I went from strength to strength. Pollock’s early Male and Female now felt positively clumsy compared to Newman’s deceptively intricate Adam and Eve pair. Where Pollock had used straight lines for the Male and curvaceous for the Female, Newman in Eve had reversed Adam’s colour emphasis. Newman had played with multiple meanings of Eve through an expert manipulation of focus and drew on the etymology of Adam in his colour scheme; Pollock had resorted to writing mathematical symbols on the Male figure and put the Female’s eyes on sideways – revolutionary? Hardly.
This exhibition brought me a long way towards understanding Ab Ex as a cohesive movement. I would have been totally lost without the audio-guide. It provided, for example, the personal history to transform Joan Mitchell’s Mandres from a messy splurge into an emotionally effecting piece. I was also generally convinced by the arrangement – broadly by artist, which seems the only sensible away to approach such a range of styles. Unfortunately, there were many riveting pieces, such as Mark Tobey’s Parnussus, displayed less prominently and glossed over in the commentary because they weren’t by the principal figures of Ab Ex, in the RA authorities’ view (a distinction at which I feel sure the artists themselves would have balked). The attention they devoted to the generally sidelined Clifford Still was, however, thoroughly justified. His sublime and expansive pieces defied deconstruction or analysis.
As to the movement itself, I found Ab Ex most successful when it reduced art to its bare essentials, leading to an exploration of how daubs of colour allow an artist to communicate states of mind to a viewer. This exhibition made me realise that to limit the artist’s means to ‘depiction’ would be greatly to inhibit the visual arts. My initial misgivings perhaps arose because it is difficult to come to terms with something which does not clearly signify anything, yet whose significance is undeniable.
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