A-List Mugshots - Hollywood

Dennis Hopper



Hopper, then 39, was arrested by New Mexico police in July 1975 and charged with reckless driving, failure to report an accident, and leaving the scene.


Jane Fonda

Arrested in November 1970 in Cleveland after she allegedly kicked a local police officer. She had been stopped at the airport by U.S. Customs agents for having a large quantity of pills in her possession.


Steve McQueen

Busted in Anchorage, Alaska for drunk driving.

More of these things here.

A stupefying work of painstaking bad taste and technical skill

In his second volume of autobiography, A Dubious Codicil, Michael Wharton describes the Shaftesbury Avenue studio of cartoonist Michael ffolkes, as “a strange room of narrow triangular shape crammed with an astounding assortment of treasures” and draws particular attention to:

...A huge photograph of a painting by the nineteenth-century French Salon painter Bouguereau was pasted on one wall, showing a crowd of naked nymphs, all identical, perfectly shaped, white-skinned, and of ideal nubility. This stupefying work of painstaking bad taste and technical skill amused Michael greatly; but it would be hypocritical to say that he – or any other man – did not enjoy looking at it.

Wharton does not specify which of Bouguereau’s ‘stupefying’ works adorned ffolkes’s wall, but it seems a reasonable guess that it was Les Oreades, which fits the description perfectly.

The mallet slipped long since

The Irish poet Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) is now somewhat undervalued I suspect. He was part of that generation that included Auden and Spender and a load of heroic literary alcoholics. Unlike many of his contemporaries he never fell for Communism, though he did for drink. By the end of his life he was ‘living on alcohol’ and regularly drinking himself to oblivion with Dominic Behan (brother of Brendan, the hellraiser's hellraiser of a playwright who famously described himself as "a drinker with a writing problem").

MacNeice's death was mildly tragicomic – having gone caving in Yorkshire to gather sound effects for his radio play Persons from Porlock he was caught in a storm and did not change out of his wet clothes until he was home in Hertfordshire, as a consequence of which he contracted bronchitis and then, fatally, pneumonia.

Many of his poems have a strong emotional force, very Irish, and ‘in-the-moment’, of a style popular amongst bad amateurs. But MacNeice does it well. The nostalgic (Proustian, you might say if you were that way inclined) Soap Suds is a good example. Most poems are about this, aren’t they?



Soap Suds

This brand of soap has the same smell as once in the big
House he visited when he was eight: the walls of the bathroom open
To reveal a lawn where a great yellow ball rolls back through a hoop
To rest at the head of a mallet held in the hands of a child.

And these were the joys of that house: a tower with a telescope;
Two great faded globes, one of the earth, one of the stars;
A stuffed black dog in the hall; a walled garden with bees;
A rabbit warren; a rockery; a vine under glass; the sea.

To which he has now returned. The day of course is fine
And a grown-up voice cries Play! The mallet slowly swings,
Then crack, a great gong booms from the dog-dark hall and the ball
Skims forward through the hoop and then through the next and then

Through hoops where no hoops were and each dissolves in turn
And the grass has grown head-high and an angry voice cries Play!
But the ball is lost and the mallet slipped long since from the hands
Under the running tap that are not the hands of a child.

'Like a bomb at a tea-party' - P H Emerson versus Peach Robinson

Emerson - Gathering Waterlillies, East Anglia 1886 - Getty Museum

Dr. Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) was a Cuban-born, American-raised British surgeon, naturalist, meteorologist, bird-watcher, champion billiard player and, for which he is remembered, influential photographer.

At a time when photographers were going to enormous lengths to recreate paintings – staging very artificial scenes (see Henry Peach Robinson’s Fading Away for the archetype) – Emerson insisted that the camera should capture “people as they really are - do not dress them up.” Many of his works feature the rural labourers of the Norfolk Broads going about their arcane business, gathering water-lillies or harvesting reeds.

Though defending photography’s right to be classed as a proper art form, Emerson argued for a naturalistic approach: "The photographic technique is perfect and needs no… bungling”. He called the then-popular business of retouching “the process by which a good, bad, or indifferent photograph is converted into a bad drawing or painting", so one wonders what he would have made of Photoshop (which the Yard has described as Satan’s Snap Fixer).

Another radical Emerson argument was the notion that pictures should be slightly out-of-focus, to replicate the reality of human vision: "Nothing in nature has a hard outline, but everything is seen against something else, and its outlines fade gently into something else, often so subtly that you cannot quite distinguish where one ends and the other begins. In this mingled decision and indecision, this lost and found, lies all the charm and mystery of nature.”

These arguments were laid out in an 1889 book called Naturalistic Photography for Students of Art, the effect of which one reviewer described as “"like dropping a bomb at a tea-party.” Certainly Peach Robinson objected, declaring: “Healthy human eyes never saw any part of a scene out of focus”.

Emerson’s retort? “I have yet to learn that any one statement of photography of Mr. Robinson has ever had the slightest effect on me except as a warning of what not to do…”

During the Reed Harvest, 1886 - Gordon Fraser Gallery Limited

Snipe Shooting, 1886 - Joseph Bellows gallery

Lazy Sunday Afternoon - Four letters

Being a retroprogressive site, The Dabbler approves of Youtube music videos about snail mail. For this week's music feature, here are four songs about letter-writing to help while away your Sunday afternoon...

The Young/Heyman standard Love Letters is an unavoidable choice. It’s been rendered by scores of artists, notably Elvis in 1966 and Alison Moyet in 1987, who respectively took it to numbers 6 and 4 in the UK charts. Ketty Lester, below, also managed number 4 in 1962 and I've gone for her - even though once Elvis has sung a song, it sort of stays sung - because I never knew what she looked like (rather stunning).

Alex Chiltern, who died earlier this year, had one of the 1960s' great black soul voices - which was quite surprising given that he was a skinny white boy. A suspiciously odd (ie. stoned) performance here from his first band The Box Tops of their most memorable hit, observe in particular the keyboardist's weirdness from about 1m15s.

The White Stripes, meanwhile, are eminently ‘retroprogressive’ with their raw blues played at an earsplitting, 21st century volume and an attention span-deficient speed.

Finally, Please Read the Letter is one of the best songs from one of the best albums of last few years, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s Raising Sand. Enjoy.

A-List Mugshots - Music

Jim Morrison



A 19-year old Morrison was arrested in 1963 for drunkenness and for the Bertie Woosterish theft of a policeman’s hat.


Frank Sinatra

In 1938, a 23-year-old Sinatra was arrested on charges of ‘seduction’ and ‘adultery’. His initial charge stated that: 'On the second and ninth days of November 1938 at the Borough of Lodi' and 'under the promise of marriage' Sinatra 'did then and there have sexual intercourse with the said complainant, who was then and there a single female of good repute.' Sinatra was released on $1,500 bond, but when it was determined that the lady in question was married a complaint of adultery was substituted, with Sinatra's bond being lowered to $500. That charge, too, was dismissed, and neither crime exists today.


Billie Holiday

In May 1947 the jazz legend, then 32, was locked up for eight months on a drug conviction.


David Bowie

Bowie, then 29, was arrested along with Iggy Pop in upstate New York in March 1976 on a cannabis possession charge following a concert. He was held for a few hours then released. His mugshot is as cool as hell, isn’t it, but it was taken a few days after the arrest when he appeared in court for arraignment.

Permanent and benevolent disorder

I came across this terrific description of a Roman Catholic home the other day:

The village was one of those half-urbanised Georgian settlements on the edge of Bath where English Catholics of a certain standing have elected to gather in their exile. The cottage lay at the country end of it, a tiny sandstone mansion with a steep narrow garden descending to a stretch of river, and they sat in the cluttered kitchen on wheelback chairs, surrounded by washing-up and vaguely votive bric-a-brac: a cracked ceramic plaque of the Virgin Mary from Lourdes; a disintegrating rush cross jammed behind the cooker; a child’s paper mobile of angels rotating in the draught; a photograph of Ronald Knox. While they talked, filthy grandchildren wandered in and stared at them before tall mothers swept them off. It was a household in permanent and benevolent disorder, pervaded by the gentle thrill of religious persecution. A white morning sun was poking through the Bath mist. There was a sound of slow water dripping in the gutters.

John le Carré - A Perfect Spy


My own Catholic heritage, alas lapsed, is of the dirtpoor Irish Merseyside variety, but having grown up in the affluent south I have spent formative time amongst such households and know their ‘permanent and benevolent disorder’ well.

The Tall Mothers invariably have long dark hair either descending in a straight ribbon to the waist or tied in a bun, and they carry on conversations while picking distractedly through hallways of strewn wellies and junior cricket equipment, generally assisted by the eldest daughter, a clone in miniature. Boys run about in unseasonal school uniform and hand-me-downs, appearing suddenly in doorways to make earnest announcements about meteor showers or dead rodents in the garden. The father is absent, or distant when present and often the first cousin of his wife.

There is always too much old furniture crammed into small, impractically-shaped rooms. Welsh dressers, egg cups, Guild of St Stephen medals ... apostle spoons, why not; and the general ambience is that of a true aristocratic bloodline in temporary exile, bumbling through a few generations until the world, which somehow took a wrong turn with Henry VIII, rights itself and the loyal are returned to their natural dominion.

Important monkey/flying squirrel insight news

For those who enjoy news about the relationship between monkeys and flying squirrels, and also good uses of the words ‘might’, ‘possible’, ‘insights’ and ‘important’ in the field of evolutionary psychology, this story will be most welcome. (My emboldening.)

Researchers have observed small monkeys called Japanese macaques going bananas at the sight of a flying squirrel...This riled-up response is probably just a false alarm, with the monkeys mistaking the squirrel for a predatory bird. On the other hand, male macaques – some of whom give chase and even attack a harmless rodent – might be trying to impress females in their troop.

Although this tough-guy motive was not proved in a new study, "it is possible that adult or sub-adult male monkeys may be 'showing off' their fitness" as potential mates, said Kenji Onishi, an assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Osaka University and lead author of the paper being published in the current issue of the journal Primate Research.

Biologists and psychologists have long studied macaques' complex social interactions for insights into human evolution and behavior.

However, much remains unknown about how macaques get along (or not) with other creatures. Better documentation of such encounters could reveal more about macaque societies as well as that of our shared primate forebears.

"Human evolution occurred alongside primate evolution from a common mammalian ancestor," Onishi told LiveScience. "Therefore, it is important to learn the evolution of primates in understanding the previous steps in human evolution."

Dabbled by Dave Lull

Lazy Sunday Afternoon – Mad Pianists

The evidence would suggest that piano virtuosity and wild eccentricity go hand-in-hand. This Sunday, here are three of the most troubled Greats (and this is not even to mention David Helfgott, made famous by the movie Shine, or Grigory Sokolov, who takes each piano apart before playing it and makes notes of his observations in a book).

Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997)
One of the 20th Century’s supreme virtuosos, the Russian played at Stalin’s funeral but preferred to give impromptu free concerts at tiny, remote towns. He claimed that his repertoire ran “to around eighty different programs, not counting chamber works” and at a wedding he once played the entire first act of Madame Butterfly from memory for a small group of guests. This prodigious memory was also a curse: a '”terrifying, nonselective memory”. He could recall the name of every person he ever met and if one escaped him he lost sleep over it. He was tormented by a droning melody in his head, which he eventually identified as a version of Rachmaninoff's ''Vocalise'', heard in childhood. At one troubled period in his life he insisted on having in his possession, at all times, a plastic pink lobster. More here.

Here is Richter playing Chopin's Etude no.4 extremely fast.




John Ogdon (1937-1989)
A sadder case, this. Regarded as perhaps the greatest British pianist as well as a prolific composer, Ogdon was a gentle giant. He won the prestigious Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition in 1962 with performances of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, as well as the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto which became his signature piece, but he also had a keen appetite for new, experimental music. He gave the first performance in 50 years of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s four hour epic, Opus Clavicembalisticum, and then offered to repeat the entire piece as an encore. But his life was blighted by chronic depression and mental illness (never fully diagnosed but probably schizophrenia) which led to three suicide attempts: one, gruesomely, by cutting his own throat. He spent long periods in Maudsley Hospital, London, undergoing lithium treatment and electroshock therapy, yet he died at the age of 52 of natural causes connected with undiagnosed diabetes. More here and here.

Here he plays Debussy's La Danse de Puck




Glenn Gould (1932 – 1982)
One of the most notoriously eccentric (to put it mildly) of all pianists, the Canadian called himself ‘The Last Puritan’ and once said that "Mozart was a bad composer who died too late rather than too early". When playing he usually accompanied himself with odd humming (to the immense irritation of many, especially sound engineers during recordings), made strange physical movements and at concerts always insisted on sitting, on a knackered old chair made by his father, precisely 14 inches above the floor. He was obsessive about the cold, wearing heavy clothes even in warm climates, which once led to him being arrested for vagrancy when sitting thus attired on a park bench in Florida. He hated touching other humans, generally refusing handshakes, and such was his hypochondria that when an employee of Steinway Hall tapped him on the back he wore a body cast for a month and threatened to sue the company. He died at the age of 50, after suffering a stroke. More here.

Here is a pretty sublime Goldburg Variations...

Karl Weschke - “murky, viscous and ominously placid”

The blockbuster Banksy vs Bristol exhibition (the opening day of which I reviewed here), was largely the business of walking round Bristol Museum going “Yes, heh heh, very smart, but is it art, dammit, is it art?” It was striking therefore to find a Banksy-vandalised Damien Hirst (about whom the Is It Art? question is also often asked) on display next to Karl Weschke’s painting Leda and The Swan.




Queasy and inexplicably menacing; Ah, now this is art, then. Why is the myth inverted, with Leda the predator and the swan seemingly trapped in a prison-like environment? Bansky’s gags can be explained in a sentence. Weschke’s bleak paintings defy words. We can give it a go, however. An obituary in The Times describes his style thus:

Weschke’s skies can look like stainless steel, his rocks like iron, and his seas can seem murky, viscous, and ominously placid. Bathers, their backs against the rocks, appear isolated, hemmed in, and vulnerable. Corpses float face down in the dark waters or lie rigid on deserted beaches, and dogs, teeth bared, defend bloody carrion.

Karl Weschke’s biography is as interesting and unsettling as his art. Born in 1925 in Gera, Germany, he was abandoned by his mother at the age of two, sent to a home and then reclaimed by her five years later. He was just one of her three illegitimate children, all by different fathers.

Weschke found the security he craved in the shape of the Hitler Youth. He joined the Luftwaffe in 1942 and was brought to England as a prisoner-of-war in 1945. So convinced a Nazi was Weschke that for some weeks after the end of WWII he refused to believe that Germany had surrendered. His ‘re-education’ resulted in a nervous breakdown and when released in 1948 he had found painting but lost all desire to return to his homeland. He later discovered that his father, a political anarchist whom he had met only briefly at the age of 11, had been murdered at Auschwitz.

Moving to Cornwall in 1955, Weschke exhibited and flogged a few paintings here and there but was largely ignored until the1990s, when the Tate bought some of his pictures and documentaries about him were screened on British and German telly. Thus he gained a reputation late in life, and was given the freedom of Gera in 2001, just four years before his death.

Weschke bore an uncanny physical resemblance to Picasso and had no trouble attracting the ladies. He married three times and fathered five children, happy to raise them alone when relationships broke down. Supplementing his income by teaching and diving for lobsters, he devoted his day to his offspring and painted by night, having no patience for the bleeding heart argument that it was impossible to bring up children and be an artist.

Indeed, although he lived in close proximity to the St Ives School (and counted writers John le Carre and WS Graham amongst his friends), he was cynical about artistic circles, often criticising their snobbery and preciousness. Asked once whether he chose to live in Cornwall because of the beautiful light, he answered, "Cornish light? I've got a 60-watt light-bulb and I keep the curtains closed."

What are libraries for?

At Touching From a Distance (now incorporated into The Spectator), guest poster Prof David McMenemy offers various arguments for the importance of public libraries. At least, he talks a lot about ‘learning spaces’ and ‘vital cogs in the wheels of societal development’ and says things like "in a digital world where publishers can put up paywalls at the click of a mouse, our collective ability to facilitate access to knowledge for our fellow citizens has become even more important." In the comments, Simon suggests that the gap can be plugged by dishing out iPads, which is very 21st Century I suppose.

All of which theorising fails to address the reality of what public libraries are for. Have you had this discussion? Do you find that nearly everyone you know thinks they’re outmoded now that we have Wikipedia and Amazon selling great books for 1p?

Me too, but then I discovered the startling fact that in Britain more books are borrowed from public libraries every year than are sold in all shops.

The top ten authors are here, and their identities tell you all you need to know about how the above startling fact can be. Public libraries are used enormously, but almost entirely by OAPs and parents of young children, two of the least fashionable and most blog-ignored groups in society.

I suggest that the debate about public libraries should therefore start by looking at the needs of these actual library users, rather than with academic theories about learning spaces or the potential of the latest Apple products.

Font snobs

“I threw up a little in my mouth when I realized I would have to read that ugly font throughout the film,” says one blogger of 'Papyrus', the font used by James Cameron for the subtitles in Avatar. Thus proving once again that there is no area of life so trivial that someone can’t get very angry about it on the internet. I mean, Papyrus,


Possibly it is, yes. Meanwhile, this is an entire website devoted to the abolition of Comic Sans, a typeface which the wonderfully snarky blogger LMNOP describes as “the AOL of fonts; the very accessibility that made it popular and novel in the 1990s became its downfall. These days, just like an e-mail from an "@ aol.com" address has a distinct lack of credibility, an e-mail written in this font makes the sender seem ridiculous and out of touch.” (She goes on to similarly demolish users of Curlz MT - "Curlz MT is not a font; it's a cry for help" – and Vivaldi – "Because everything you write should look like a wedding invitation").

The trouble with fonts is that once you start looking for them you can’t see anything else. Little wonder, then, that people have started suffering from Font Paralysis, a very 21st century disease whereby writers are unable to start their great novels, poems or CVs because they can’t settle on the ‘right’ font.

...Chapter One. I mean, Chapter One. No that’s too 1950s newspaperman. Perhaps I mean Chapter One. Oh God, will Verdana subtly dilute the carefully-crafted ambience of my potential short story? ...

The Canadian blogger Phronk argues that Font Snobs are buffoons and plonkers. Phronk thinks fonts don’t matter and he’s drawn a clever flow chart to illustrate this. “A font's job is to display words” he insists, correctly. Unfortunately he adds: “So sure, that means being neutral and getting out of the words' way”, which is precisely the point being made by the Ban Comic Sans movement.

Fonts only matter if they’re visible. Like Wimbledon ballboys or manservants, the best ones - Ariel, Times, Georgia – are the ones you don’t notice at all.

Autochrome world

Autochrome colour pictures from the early 1900s, from the globe-spanning collection of Albert Kahn.

Germany:

Holland:

Vietnam:

Lots more here. (h/t Mike Beversluis)

The Cobham Cuckoos

If you visit Longleat and safely negotiate the lions and herpes-infested monkeys, you can enter the vast Elizabethan mansion and – via a circuitous route taking in such stately home essentials as the Saloon, the Red Library and the Dress Corridor – finally arrive at the Grand Staircase, at the top of which you will find the multiple eyes of this portrait staring at you.



Painted in 1567 by the suspicious-sounding Master of the Countess of Warwick, it depicts William Brooke, the 10th Baron Cobham, his second wife Frances Newton (standing) and their offspring. The lady sitting is Frances’ sister Johanna. She’s holding Henry. The other children are Maximilian, William, twins Frances and Elizabeth, and Margaret.

They all, you will note, have the same face. Ageless, like Midwich Cuckoos the children gaze at the nothingness beyond the limits of our perception. Margaret on the right is clearly the leader, her dark artistry fathomless, the evil palpable in her smirk – it is no coincidence that her pet, or dæmon, is a black cat.* The twins are soulless automatons, their actions controlled by infant hound-master Maximilian (left).

Their mother, Frances Newton, is an empty husk, all colour drained from her features. The Baron himself prays ceaselessly and furiously for redemption. Only Johanna, the aunt, knows the true nature of the Cuckoos; they revealed themselves to her one black night and now command her wholly.


*Or possibly marmoset, which is just as sinister if you ask me.

6 Clicks for the Endless Voyage: Brit

In Anthony Burgess’ short story The Endless Voyager, a businessman throws away his passport and wallet mid-transit and, unable to enter any country, spends the rest of his life shuttling from airport to airport. He eventually goes mad. Today, of course, such a traveller might stave off purgatorial insanity by dabbling on his iPhone or netbook.

In this post, The Dabbler's own Brit selects six cultural links that might sustain him in an interminable succession of departure lounges.


1. The Beatles, Sie Leibt Dich

"If it wasn’t for Churchill/the Americans/D-Day/the Spirit of the Blitz/your Grandad, we’d all be speaking German by now." Hearing John and Paul sing the British pop song par excellence in Deutsch is like a glimpse at an alternative universe. Of course that universe could not have existed. Sie Leibt Dich makes the familiar strange.




2. Picasso, Still Life with Bust, Bowl and Palette



While at school I cut some tokens out of the newspaper and sent off for a free Picasso print, primarily because I thought that having it on my bedroom wall would make me look offbeat and cool. I didn’t really appreciate it as a piece of art; if anything it was a bit of a joke. When I went to university I put it in a wooden frame from a charity shop and displayed it on my wall for much the same reasons as before but gradually I came to appreciate that there was something inexpressibly pleasing about the way the shapes were put together. Then as I became more aware of Picasso I realised that, in fact, Bust Bowl and Palette one of the least interesting and pleasing of his works, but nonetheless it was the only one I had and I felt an obscure loyalty to it. When I became a bit more solvent I invested in a proper frame and transferred the print to that.

While other artworks have come and gone, Bust Bowl and Palette has adorned the walls of all of my abodes. Now, I realise when looking at the picture, any aesthetic appreciation I might once have felt for it has retreated to irrelevance; its appeal is almost entirely based on comfort and familiarity. Never, ever, until the day I die, shall I willingly get rid of Picasso’s Still Life with Bust, Bowl and Palette. And where is the picture now, you ask? It’s in the attic, waiting until we have a bigger house, because my wife doesn’t like it.


3. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
All the follies of human existence are laid bare in this book's wicked definitions, now available online. Worth it just for: Predicament (n): The wage of consistency. Anyone who has ever entered into a lengthy blog argument will know the truth of that one.


4. Atherton v Donald, Trent Bridge 1998

Cricket was never about vicars and teas and the village green for me. I grew up watching the West Indies: cricket was about surviving violent assault. I was a keen, reasonably talented opening batsman at schoolboy level, but the first time my body took a battering from a proper fast bowler I became painfully aware, in all senses, that I didn’t have what it takes.

In the second Test between England and South Africa at Trent Bridge in 1998, Allan Donald was, more or less, trying to kill Mike Atherton by bowling 90mph at throat-height from round the wicket. Atherton, a Charlie Brown-like geek – gangly, toothy, vaguely bookish – stood there and took the worst Donald could chuck at him and survived it. Really, Mike Atherton had none of the attributes of a great sportsman except the rarest and most important one.




5. Sagrada Familia image gallery
Some excellent judges of taste have informed me that Gaudi’s still-unfinished cathedral Sagrada Familia is quite uniquely ugly. “For people who like cacti”, as one blogger memorably put it. Perhaps so, but Barcelona was the first holiday I took with my wife and we were broke and 21 years old so everything about that city is wonderful. But even if Sagrada Familia is ugly and possibly even a bit naff in the student-poster way that Salvador Dali is naff, the mere fact of its existence is remarkable enough. A vast wasps nest still under construction, in Europe, in 2010, for the glory of God. God was supposed to be dead by now.



6. Handel, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth

Sacred music is about humans, God is the justification. In the Godless eternal airport lounge, in Richard Dawkins’ post-religious world, where middle distance-gazing professionals gather in conference centres to discuss painless suicide techniques, where the Sagrada Familia construction work has been cancelled and where reclining in First Class on the Eurostar we eat Asian Fusion food from recyclable boxes and tap secret, bleak poems into our iPads, I Know That My Redeemer Liveth will still make perfect sense. More sense, if anything – the poignancy will verge on unbearable.