For as long as I can remember, I have wondered about those little, stylised representations of ‘men’ and ‘women’, when in search of a public convenience. I always think about the stick figure with the skirt: do the majority of women look like this? Just recently, I was confined to bed and was reading through a bundle of magazines, when I came across a feature by a writer recollecting his maiden aunt who wore a salmon-coloured corset underneath her clothes, for all the days of her life. What puzzled him most was that his aunt, in his opinion, was in no need of such a garment because she was so skinny.
Ah, dearie me! I screamed with laughter as I remembered my Nanna and her attachment to her corset. Like all Victorian ladies, she had been put into ‘stays’ at an early age, then had grown up and old, that way. Size didn’t come into it. In her opinion, a lady was not properly dressed without a corset. Getting into the corset was a coming of age ritual for the Victorian girl, it seems. Sometime in her teens, her hair went up, her waist pulled in and her skirts down, giving her that familiar violin silhouette. It was all blown away in the roaring twenties, of course, but this bypassed Nanna as she lived in remote parts. She also missed out on the decades prior to the swinging sixties and as late as the nineteen seventies, she was worrying our Mum about putting my sister and I into corsets – I need not tell you what we thought of the notion.
Curiously, corsets have been called ‘foundation’ garments, as if the outer garments won’t work without the laced stays underneath. More curious still, while the lady kept her corset underneath her clothes, the Victorian tart is often portrayed with a laced bodice for an outer garment, coyly hinting at what is underneath. Even today, the corset is often used as a fetish, a symbol of femininity. Yet, few contemporary women actually wear one. When Madonna wore one for a stage act, she knew exactly what she was doing. And like the ubiquitous girl symbol outside public bathrooms, few women look like that.
Monday 22 November 2010
Tuesday 16 November 2010
Why it will be different this time...
The building sits serenely on the bank of the Thames, unaware of the consternation that has washed about it in the thirty-five years since its main use was decommissioned. Battersea Power Station is like a fine, old lady, fallen on hard times. She is expensive to maintain, yet too grand to be put to humble albeit lucrative use. Her credentials are impressive. BPS was designed by leading architect, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, in the ‘brick cathedral’ Art Deco style. The main building was built by John Mowlem & Co, and the total cost of construction was £2,141,550 – billions in today’s money.
It was 1953 before BPS was fully in operation as a coal-fired powered station, and it seems incredible that such thought and care went into a venture that stayed in place for only twenty-two years more. But by 1975, the day of coal as a major provider of electricity was over. In the meantime, the building had become an international icon – hear the word ‘Battersea’ and what do you think of? Witness the prescience of Alfred Hitchcock using the new BPS building as an action backdrop in his (1930s) movie, Sabotage. Since then, it has been used on music album covers, and as an action backdrop setting in numerous TV shows, including Dr Who. Incredible, then, that the site fell into rack and ruin but the problems surrounding it are legion. BPS has both the blessing and the curse to be the largest brick building in Europe. Its expansiveness makes it unsuitable for the type of development of Bankside, its sister building down the river (Tate Modern). Besides, the other end of town has the benefit of City finance, a privilege the Battersea site lacks. Over the years, proposals have come and been banished, one by one for a variety of reasons; among them a dearth of funds, opposition by heritage groups, and of local residents. There was the theme park idea that cost too much, and the various ‘retail and housing’ developments that would surround BPS, and block its view from the river. Now, Real Estate Opportunities, the firm that bought the site in 2006 has just had a £5.5 billion ‘retail and housing’ plan approved, with the proviso that the Northern Line is extended by two stops to facilitate the shoppers and visitors who will certainly want to go there. In short, if the public money is made available, private funds will follow. It all looks very credible, but so have the plans of the past. We can only wait and see.
It was 1953 before BPS was fully in operation as a coal-fired powered station, and it seems incredible that such thought and care went into a venture that stayed in place for only twenty-two years more. But by 1975, the day of coal as a major provider of electricity was over. In the meantime, the building had become an international icon – hear the word ‘Battersea’ and what do you think of? Witness the prescience of Alfred Hitchcock using the new BPS building as an action backdrop in his (1930s) movie, Sabotage. Since then, it has been used on music album covers, and as an action backdrop setting in numerous TV shows, including Dr Who. Incredible, then, that the site fell into rack and ruin but the problems surrounding it are legion. BPS has both the blessing and the curse to be the largest brick building in Europe. Its expansiveness makes it unsuitable for the type of development of Bankside, its sister building down the river (Tate Modern). Besides, the other end of town has the benefit of City finance, a privilege the Battersea site lacks. Over the years, proposals have come and been banished, one by one for a variety of reasons; among them a dearth of funds, opposition by heritage groups, and of local residents. There was the theme park idea that cost too much, and the various ‘retail and housing’ developments that would surround BPS, and block its view from the river. Now, Real Estate Opportunities, the firm that bought the site in 2006 has just had a £5.5 billion ‘retail and housing’ plan approved, with the proviso that the Northern Line is extended by two stops to facilitate the shoppers and visitors who will certainly want to go there. In short, if the public money is made available, private funds will follow. It all looks very credible, but so have the plans of the past. We can only wait and see.
Tuesday 9 November 2010
History of the World
The history of the artefact is the history of all humanity. After all, it is our ability to make things that delineates us from other animals. Sure, birds build nests and beavers build dams, but that is all they will ever do. Man is not stuck in such an evolutional groove but has the capacity to go on creating and building, seemingly forever. Archaeologists and anthropologists work in tandem, trying to pinpoint the time when a rather sophisticated primate became ‘human’.
The answer may never be known, but we do know that the ‘oldest’ cave painting, found at Lascaux in France and dated at c 17,000 BC, is rather recent in the history of mankind. The Greek poet Homer wrote of the Trojan wars, estimated to be about 12 or 13 BC. Whether the story of the wooden horse is truth or fantasy matters not. It says much about the level of skill in woodworking, and the ingenuity of the military strategists of the time.
Indeed, Greek mythology is rich with instances of gods, humans and monsters using made objects to secure their own ends. The hero of the Trojan war, Odysseus, was an Achaean who had left his wife Penelope at home with their son. Suitors that claimed Odysseus was dead, and wanted to marry her – and her lands and money, no doubt, besieged her. The wise woman started work on a tapestry. She laboured at it by day, promising to choose a suitor when it was finished. But she unpicked the stitches by night and held off the marriage brigade for the twenty years or so that it took her husband to fight his wars and return from his travels.
Odysseus had his own material issues. In one instance, he spent seven years marooned upon an island, stranded there after his ship was wrecked in a storm. Then, some passing deity took pity upon him, and bequeathed him that very practical thing, a boat. Odysseus may have been a hero, but he lacked skills in woodworking. Meanwhile, Hermes had his winged sandals to help him deliver, while Poseidon was all powerful with his trident. No matter how invincible the mythical deities seemed, they still needed things to be effective.
The answer may never be known, but we do know that the ‘oldest’ cave painting, found at Lascaux in France and dated at c 17,000 BC, is rather recent in the history of mankind. The Greek poet Homer wrote of the Trojan wars, estimated to be about 12 or 13 BC. Whether the story of the wooden horse is truth or fantasy matters not. It says much about the level of skill in woodworking, and the ingenuity of the military strategists of the time.
Indeed, Greek mythology is rich with instances of gods, humans and monsters using made objects to secure their own ends. The hero of the Trojan war, Odysseus, was an Achaean who had left his wife Penelope at home with their son. Suitors that claimed Odysseus was dead, and wanted to marry her – and her lands and money, no doubt, besieged her. The wise woman started work on a tapestry. She laboured at it by day, promising to choose a suitor when it was finished. But she unpicked the stitches by night and held off the marriage brigade for the twenty years or so that it took her husband to fight his wars and return from his travels.
Odysseus had his own material issues. In one instance, he spent seven years marooned upon an island, stranded there after his ship was wrecked in a storm. Then, some passing deity took pity upon him, and bequeathed him that very practical thing, a boat. Odysseus may have been a hero, but he lacked skills in woodworking. Meanwhile, Hermes had his winged sandals to help him deliver, while Poseidon was all powerful with his trident. No matter how invincible the mythical deities seemed, they still needed things to be effective.
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