Tuesday 30 June 2009
John Berger
Friday 26 June 2009
The Fire Raisers
Leaflet for The Fire Raisers at the Royal Court Theatre 1961
© The Royal Court Theatre, London
Stage shot of The Fire Raisers at the Royal Court Theatre 1961
© The Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling
In a contemporary review of the play the theatre critic Irving Wardle used a Brecht poem in his review, part of which I thought I would reproduce here:
"In one of Brecht's didactic poems the Buddha answers a doubting pupil by telling a story about a burning house. Its occupants, he says, were in no hurry to leave: -
One of them
While the heat was already scorching his eyebrows,
Asked me what it was like outside,
Whether it wasn't raining,
Whether the wind wasn't blowing,
perhaps, whether there was
Another house for them, and more
of this kind. Without answering
I went out again. These people here,
I thought,
Must burn to death before they stop asking questions.
This uncomfortable little parable could stand as an epigraph for Max Frisch's The Fire Raisers, a streamlined satire on bourgeois idealism which would have earned the approval of the Master....
The final third of the play in Lindsay Anderson's production is nothing short of terrifying... as the incendiarists deliver a solid blow to one's sense of security." (Irving Wardle, Fire up above, The Observer, 1961).
Alfred Marks and chorus of Firemen
in The Fire Raisers, Royal Court Theatre 1961
© The Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling
Back of above photo with Lindsay Anderson's handwritten description
© The Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling
I went to see a production of the play, this time entitled The Arsonists, at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2007. It was directed by Ramin Gray in the Jerwood Theatre downstairs and this was its first major UK revival since Anderson's production in 1961. I really enjoyed seeing the play, and it was great to just be sitting in the Royal Court Theatre, somewhere where Lindsay Anderson spent so much of his time.
When cataloguing the letter from Max Frisch to Lindsay Anderson I checked online and found that there is a Max Frish Archive at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich - where the papers of Thomas Mann are also held.
Tuesday 16 June 2009
Photographs from the Lindsay Anderson Collection
Lindsay Anderson and Richard Harris rehearsing a scene from This Sporting Life
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling
Lindsay Anderson directing a scene on the set of The White Bus
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling
Lindsay Anderson, Miroslav Ondricek and interpreter on set of The White Bus
© Lindsay Anderson Collection, University of Stirling
Monday 15 June 2009
Picasso, Malaga and Guernica
Malaga, 2009
© Kathryn Mackenzie
View of Malaga from the Gibralfaro Castle, 2009
© Kathryn Mackenzie
Whilst at the Museum I bought a really interesting book Picasso's War: the destruction of Guernica, and the masterpiece that changed the world, by Russell Martin. I've still never seen Picasso's Guernica but one day I'll make the trip to Madrid. The book charts the history of the Spanish Civil War and Guernica, the place, and how it was that Picasso came to paint Guernica, and then goes on to discuss the reception of the painting at the time, and in the decades that followed. There are a couple of points from the book that stick in my mind. The first being that, as with other work, Picasso dated his sketches and development work for this painting, but in addition, for the first time, Guernica was also photographed at many stages of its development by Dora Maar, a photographer and artist who at that time was also the lover of Picasso.
Picasso entrusted Guernica to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1938 and it would stay in America, with short tours elsewhere, until 1981. MoMA weren't keen to return the work but the Government of Spain used archives to help secure its return to Spain. They provided assurances that the work would be safe, they gained the support of a number of Picasso's family members', and they used documents to prove that, in 1937, the Spanish government had paid Picasso for his materials for the painting (Picasso didn't want payment from the Government for painting the work as it was his way of supporting the cause of the Republican Government), and that Picasso had gifted the painting to Spain.
Wednesday 10 June 2009
Art and Archives
Although I said it's not part of my job, working with artists is something that has been going on for some time now at Stirling University Archives. The Archivist Karl Magee has worked with The Changing Rooms Gallery in Stirling in the past and there is another exhibition coming up which I'm pretty excited about. It is an exhibition about John Grierson and Norman McLaren entitled 'Art is not a mirror, it's a hammer!' (an oft-quoted line by John Grierson). The exhibition is still in the planning stages but going by the information below it is going to be a great show
"Launching a long-term project with artists Katy Dove, Simon Yuill and Luke Fowler The Changing Room is working with the University of Stirling to investigate their Grierson and McLaren archives and develop new work in web, music and film. The exhibition presents an exploration of the lives of Stirling born filmmakers Norman McLaren and John Grierson as a starting point for the contemporary artists’ new works.
John Grierson, the ‘father of documentary’ and Norman McLaren, an Oscar-winning experimental filmmaker, animator and artist were brought up in Stirling and both attended Stirling High School. Grierson’s contribution to the development of film is well documented but he also had an important role in shaping McLaren’s career. In 1935, when McLaren was a student at the Glasgow School of Art, he won first prize at the Scottish Amateur Film Festival from a jury led by Grierson. The following year Grierson invited him to London to work in the creative hothouse that was the GPO film unit. Several years later Grierson brought McLaren to Canada and set him up with his own studio and full artistic freedom at the National Film Board, which Grierson had established in 1941. A string of international awards for McLaren’s pioneering, experimental work followed including an Oscar for his film Neighbours in 1953."
Both the John Grierson Archive and the Norman McLaren Archive are held at the University of Stirling. I have included an image below from the Norman McLaren Archive as it's such a beautiful letter, and a wonderful example of the wealth of material in the Archives. I love how he finishes the letter "P.S. the fighting is nowhere near this place" - I wonder if his reassurances to his mother worked, probably not!
Letter from Norman McLaren to his mother whilst he was in China, 1949
© Norman McLaren Collection, University of Stirling