Hitler on the Church

"One day the institution of the church will be given over to ridicule" - Hitler

Benjamin on Fascism

"Fascism is the aestheticising of politics" - Benjamin

Hitler on the Moon

Hitler believed that the moon was made entirely of ice.

The Flaneurs of Paris

It was nice to see BBC2’s Paris program cover the Flaneur, or the ‘gentleman stroller’ and contextualise the practice as a 19th century fashion. The program maintained that the Flaneur was still alive and well in modern Paris, showing us people wandering the Parisian streets. The presenter walked, shopped, and sat in Café’s, explaining that street watching was “a little game played between the sitter and the stroller.”

A Book composed entirely of Quotes

The Arcades Project as envisioned by Walter Benjamin was to be a book composed entirely of assembled quotations from other authors.
The idea of a book composed entirely of quotes had been around for a long time. Gustave Flaubert had also wanted to compose such a book and almost succeeded; it was to have been the second part of his final comic novel Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881). Unfortunately he died before it could be properly assembled.
Perhaps the most successfull attempt at such a book was by Guy Debord (1957) produced a book he called Memoires. He didn’t write it. He cut scores of paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or sometimes single words out of books, magazines, and newspaper.

Benjamin and Ruskin

Benjamin and Ruskin have more in common than their interest in explaining cultural history through buildings: Both lost their wives to their best friends. Benjamin’s wife Dora Pollak fell madly in love with Benjamin’s childhood friend Ernst Schoen and soon left Walter.

Ruskin’s wife Effie left him for the painter Millais who had become one of Ruskin’s best friends. Effie and Millais met when he was painting her and Ruskin on a Scottish holiday. In 1855, a year after her marriage to Ruskin was annulled Effie and Millais married.

Hitler on Nazism

Hitler:-
"That is the great thing about our movement-that these members are uniform, not only in ideas, but even the facial expression is almost the same."

Ruskin's Parents

Ruskin's parents were cousins

A History of Superhero Comics

Superhero comics began as an American phenomenon and can be dated from the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics no.1, in June 1938. The success of Superman led to the creation of numerous other characters cast in a similar mold. This era became known as The Golden Age. In the 1950’s, in the post-atomic era, Marvel Comics appeared and published a range of characters who owed their origins to transformations wrought by radiation. This era was known as The Silver Age.

Somewhere between Frank Miller on Daredevil (May 1979-February 1983) and Alan Moore on Marvelman (March 1982-August 1984) the Bronze Age began. The Bronze Age marks the beginning of the interest in continuity. Tellingly it was at this time that DC Comics (publishers of Superman and Batman) attempted to simplify their hopelessly convoluted continuity, with the 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' miniseries. In the course of the Golden and Silver ages an overwhelming amount of continuity had built up. With characters increasingly interacting with each other, there came a need to fix some kind of single universe for characters. 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' tried to do this for the DC universe. This series saw several different Earths with various different heroes merge to make one Earth which was home to all DC’s heroes.

Comic book readership has changed dramatically since 1938, both in terms of size and demographic. In the 50’s comics were sold in huge numbers on every news stand whereas now they are sold virtually exclusively in specialist comic shops. Since the very earliest days of the American Superhero comic book there have been letter columns wherein fans could express their opinions about comics. With the advent of the Marvel age of comics (or The Silver Age), Marvel editor Stan Lee made the letter column a far more interactive and vibrant forum. Using the letter columns of DC and Marvel, and subsequently the emerging fanzines, fans by the late 1960’s had developed a small network of clubs and correspondence. While not a dominant segment in absolute numbers, fans represented a powerful one due to the intensity of their interest and their large per-person purchases. It was these fans or older readers, who in the 1980’s increasingly became the major target market for superhero comics, and it was these older, more dedicated readers who drove the interest in continuity. They wanted a universe that made sense. Batman editor Denny O’Neil reflects on how the modern audience differs from early comic book readers; “I think the audience is more cohesive. Fans read a great deal more intently now and with a great deal of care. Also letter columns didn't exist back then so there was no arena to exchange opinions, nor were there conventions and all those other places where fans can get together and compare notes”(Pearson and Uricchio). The birth of the internet has given fans a far more immediate interactive forum.

Ruskin and the Environment

When Ruskin predicted, in “The Storm Cloud of the 19th Century”, that rapid industrialisation was having, and would continue to have, a negative effect on the weather and on the wider environment, he was considered mad. In the years immediately after writing this book he actually did go mad, leading to his concerns being conveniently explained away as the first rumblings of his madness. Indeed, after his death "The Storm Cloud of the 19th Century" was dismissed as tragic, a once great mind becoming feeble.

Ruskin's Dream

From Ruskin's Diary June 27th 1875:-
"Had terrific dream last night, of a house on fire with huge glass windows, which a crowd hanging at, fell back with the shattered glass into the street, blazing ruin falling over them. One man in a nightgown, creeping afterwards on the pavement towards the fire."

TheLeedsArcadesProject's Dream June 27th 2007:-
Arrive at theatre where i am appearing in a Beckett play (title not specified). Its an hour long monologue. I haven't bothered to read the script yet but have arrived at the theatre 20 minutes early to give it a read through.
Director: "How the hell are you going to read something in 20 minutes which is an hour long?"
Me: "Oh yeah, i didn't really think it through did I?"

I think to myself:"F*cking hell"

The Arcades of Paris

It was lovely to see the Arcades of Paris make a rare appearance on British TV last night. 'Paris' (BBC2, 26.6.07, 9pm), presented by Sandrine Voillet nicely touched on the golden era of the Arcade. She visited Galerie Vivienne, which was built in 1823 and was the first of the 150 arcades that were soon built in Paris.

"The real victors of the French Revolution were the middle classes. This new breed of capitalist needed to have somewhere to go shopping. Somewhere away from the damp climate, filthy streets and speeding horse drawn carriages."

"The shopping arcade was a haven of calm and elegance. The shops pandered to the aspirations of the bourgeoisie elite; so there were cafes, bookshops, clothes shops and wine merchants."

"The arcade is an open space which you can pass through, but at the same time it is a protected place."

Walter Benjamin and Comics

I would like to look at Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in relation to comics. In this essay, Benjamin introduced the idea that reproduction destroys the unique “aura” of a work of art. Benjamin speculated that in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (now digital reproduction) as art is reproduced, it loses its aura, the thing which makes it unique and special. So as a painting becomes familiar on posters and postcards, or a building is photographed (digitally photographed and then emailed or blogged), the familiarity of the image means that the original work loses its unique aura.

Comics, however only came into being when print technology developed and newspapers were able to reproduce them. In a way, this means that the aura of comics exists in their very own mechanical reproducibility. That is, what Benjamin would have called the "decay of the aura", in comics meant its origin, its creation. Comics came into being, first, as an unseen-but-by-the-author original, which later became meaningful and valuable as an expression when mechanically reproduced via print technology.

Before the wary acceptance of comic art in the gallery and museum circuit, in comics the "original" only becomes present to the reader via its mechanical reproduction: the newspaper, the monthly issue. It makes sense that an expression which, as Anne Elizabeth Moore says, "sits uneasily in the history of art" could find its aura only through its very copy, its reproduction, since its original works were never considered, not even by some of its creators, "art".

I Love Continuity

Let us return to Thornton’s Arcade in Leeds and OK Comics (19 Thornton’s Arcade), where fans of infantile male power fantasies find a sort of home, a sort of community. But what binds this strange social world together? What is the glue that unites this community?

I believe that for many comic fans, a love of comic book continuity is the glue that binds their community together. What do I mean by continuity? Consider, for example, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond or Philip Marlow. Despite these characters’ appearances in films, and even their continuation in literary form beyond the deaths of their creators, their central identity resides in a series of texts by single authors. The fan community in this case regards these texts as the single canonized repository of their characters with the key components of the hero’s identity. Similarly, superhero’s have a set of key personality components which centrally identifies each superhero, however the comic fan has no authoritative repository of these key components to turn to, but is faced instead with an ongoing and potentially endless stream of new texts.

At one level, continuity refers to the coherence and consistency between stories involving one particular character, such as the key tenants of his personality, the details of his origin and what he stands for. However, because super-heroes inhabit fantasy worlds that transcend individual characters, continuity also covers consistency between characters across titles published by one publisher. Batman, published by DC Comics, occupies the same universe as Green Lantern, The Flash and many other characters. Similarly, Spider-Man, published by Marvel Comics, occupies the same universe as the X-Men and the Hulk. Further complicating matters, individual characters frequently guest star in each others’ comics, thereby establishing elements of shared biography that may be referred to in later adventures. I believe that an interest in continuity is one of the major foci of superhero fans’ relation to comics and has inspired efforts by creators and editors to rationalize their imaginary universes.

Comic fans regard it as being of the utmost importance that characters behave according to the established rules for that character. “What’s with Wolverine in Secret Wars? What happened to the cold, hard, killing machine? He’s supposed to be a Ronin for Christ’s sake, this guys a drunken buffoon” (Emmett, Millarworld, 3/5/2005). Or “Just read the latest issue of The Ultimates and loved it, but thought Thor behaved completely out of character.” (Nigel Lentham, Millarworld, 15/4/2005). This in-depth knowledge of characters is the fans reward for years of loyalty and as such is a sort of badge of power.

"Fans seemingly blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, speaking of characters as if they had an existence apart from their textual manifestations” (Jenkins) Hence the fact that, like some of Shakespeare’s more vivid characters they can be talked about as if they were real, so fans feel free to discuss Clarke Kent’s personality or Wolverine’s behaviour as if they really existed.

There are however different approaches to continuity and how consistent comic book universes need to be:
Njerry 18/3/05: “I used to be a stickler for continuity but I realize these days that strict adherence to continuity is neither possible nor necessary for the enjoyment of a well-crafted story. And a well crafted story is more important to me than whether Foggy Nelson is left-handed.”
Bruce Kitun 18/3/05: “I still say the comics world would be a hell of a lot more interesting if great creators were given carte blanche on the characters—only being forced to use certain ongoing aspects of the characters (Batman’s parents are killed, he becomes the worlds greatest detective, fighter, etc). Sure, have a bit of continuity, yeah fine, great. But not every god dam comic, and honestly, what’s the point of continuity again? To be able to go—oh cool, that’s like in Fantastic Four?” (Marvel Continuity, does it matter? Millarworld, 18/3/2005).

To take such seemingly superficial art so seriously reinforces Jenkins’ concept of fan culture as a challenge to established cultural tastes, “fan culture muddies boundaries, treating popular texts as if they merited the same degree of attention and appreciation as canonical texts. Reading practices (close scrutiny, elaborate exegesis, repeated and prolonged rereading, etc) acceptable in confronting a work of “serious merit” seem perversely misapplied to the more “disposable” texts of mass culture. Fans speak of “artists” where others can see only commercial hacks, of transcendental meanings where others find only banalities, of “quality and innovation” where others see only formula and convention” (Jenkins). This is certainly the case with the comic community for whom there is great depth and artistry in their favourite comics, whereas for the wider community super-hero comics have a very low status in society.

Ruskin's Diary June 22nd 1875

"June 22nd. Tuesday. To Cowley in evening. The Bishop and his nieces delightful. Ethel, his 'nurse', complaining sotto voce at dinner that he must be made of india rubber, for, if you squash him, he always comes up again!"

Comic Book Fans

Let us return to Thornton’s Arcade in Leeds and OK Comics (19 Thornton’s Arcade), where the sellers of formulaic, infantile male power fantasies no doubt still yearn for an escape from their prostitution of the commodity-soul. But who are these people and their customers; these adults who sell and read childish pamphlets, originally conceived as diversions for the weak minded? And what of their psyche? What of their soul when their social experience, their social world is only to be surrounded by others with similar tastes as their own? What kind of strange social world is this? What kind of community is this?

“The community is properly conceived as the site of social reproduction, but the activities involved in social reproduction are so pervasive that the identity and spatial boundaries of community are often indistinct. In addition to a grouping of homes, the community incorporates myriad intertwined social and cultural institutions – educational, religious, recreational” (Smith) I believe that comic fans form a type of community; one that revolves around a shared recreational activity.

Speaking about early American Science Fiction fans (the comic fans ancestor) G. Jones has specified that: “The early fans were overwhelmingly male, mostly middle class, mostly Anglo or Germanic or Jewish, and mostly isolated, whether by geography, personality, or physical disability, until they discovered fandom. Looking at pictures of the early fan clubs, one sees a lot of eye-glasses and few athletic physiques” (Jones,). To a certain extent the comic fan still conforms to this stereotype. Whilst the boys with athletic hair and sculptured physiques are a little further down the arcade in ‘Chimp’ or 'Hip' or one of the other stylish boutiques where they can purchase the latest seasonal fashions from other men with plenty of “product” in their hair, the eye-glassed, flabby boys are in OK Comics discussing whether Power Girls breasts are bigger than Witchblade’s (they are).

Fans are usually demonised and comic book fans in particular. For an example of this, one need only watch the TV show, 'The Simpson’s' where the Comic Shop Owner is a classic example of a nerd: He is fat, unkempt, socially inept, always quoting obscure facts about comic characters and possibly psychotic (in one particular episode he attempts to kidnap Lucy Lawless in order to make her his wife).

As a comic book fan myself, on my CV I used to list my hobby as ‘Panelology’ rather than saying I collected comic books, in order to distance myself from the media stereotype and to attempt to give my hobby some little amount of kudos.

OK, all well and good, so these social misfits have formed a community from their shared hobby, a community that offers these isolated individuals, Yes, some isolated by “geography, personality or physical disability”, these oddballs a home, a place where their interest, their knowledge is rewarded and they can feel, at least for a little while, like worthwhile individuals. Bravo OK Comics!

But still, we have not fully examined the interest these strange pamphlets, these curious shards of the commodity soul, have for their fans. We shall attempt to do so, we shall attempt to examine their appeal, but that will have to wait for now……..

Ruskin's Tea Room, Leeds

In County Arcade, Leeds, you would, just a few short years ago, have found Ruskin's Tea Room, a traditional English tea shop named after a man who epitomises grace and humanism.

Unfortunately, this example of a more civilized, bygone era has now been converted into a designer clothes shop; Riess, specialising in whatever everyone else is specialising in this year, or should I say season? It is one of Leeds’ most fashionable boutiques.

Saltaire

Saltaire, located on the outskirts of Bradford, West Yorkshire is named after Sir Titus Salt. It was a purpose built village to house workers for his new textile mill, by the side of the River Aire. Ruskin called Saltaire a “New Jerusalem” and the nearby beauty spot, Shipley Glen a “Little Switzerland.” Ruskin was heavily involved with the reform movement of which Titus Salt and Saltaire are perhaps the best examples. Saltaire truly was an attempt to create the Victorian, Industrial Utopia so close to Ruskin’s heart.

The Song of Saltaire, a poem from the time of Ruskin, expresses the optimism, romanticism and high moral tone of Victorian Utopian socialism, which Ruskin and Titus Salt, the builder of Saltaire, were such a key part of:-

George Weerth, a young German was on holiday in England during Victorian times, here, in his diary, he describes Victorian Bradford:-

“Every other factory town in England is a paradise in comparison to this hole. In Manchester the air lies like lead upon you; in Birmingham it is just as if you were sitting with your nose in a stove pipe; in Leeds you have to cough with the dust and the stink as if you had swallowed a pound of Cayenne pepper in one go - but you can put up with all that. In Bradford, however, you think you have been lodged with the devil incarnate. If anyone wants to feel how a poor sinner is tormented in Purgatory, let him travel to Bradford”.

Into this world was born Titus Salt, the son of Daniel Salt, a wool-stapler. He was born on 20th September, 1803. Titus, when young, wanted to train as a doctor but found that he fainted at the sight of blood. His father encouraged him to learn the family wool stapling business.

When Daniel Salt retired in 1833, Titus took over the running of the company. Over the next twenty years Titus Salt became the largest employer in Bradford. Between 1801 and 1851 the population of Bradford grew from 13,000 to 104,000. With over 200 factory chimneys continually churning out black, sulphurous smoke, Bradford gained the reputation of being the most polluted town in England. Bradford's sewage was dumped into the River Beck. As people also obtained their drinking water from the river, this created serious health problems. Bradford’s life expectancy, of just over eighteen years, was one of the lowest in the country.
In 1833, Titus spotted a consignment of Alpaca wool stored in a Liverpool warehouse. No one else was interested in it but Titus thought it was worth experimenting on. Alpaca was very difficult to weave but his persistence paid off and he found the wool could be transformed into the finest cloth if woven on a cotton or silk warp.

Charles Dickens penned an article called “the Great Yorkshire Llama” a playful reference to Titus Salt and his famous use of Alpaca wool. Titus even took his workers to Malham, Ruskin’s Yorkshire Paradise, on a works outing, which was a significant gesture and a sign of his developing paternalism.

After much experimentation, Salt discovered that the Rodda Smoke Burner produced very little pollution. In 1842 he arranged for these burners to be used in all his factories. In 1848 Salt became mayor of Bradford. He tried hard to persuade the council to pass a by-law that would force all factory owners in the town to use the new smoke burners. Most of the factory owners however, refused to accept that the smoke produced by their factories was even damaging to people's health.In 1850, Salt announced his plans to build a new industrial community called Saltaire at a nearby beauty spot on the banks of the River Aire. At the centre of the village was a textile mill. The mill was the largest and most modern in Europe.

Titus commissioned the architects, Lockwood and Mawson, who had built Bradford’s Wool Exchange (where Ruskin had delivered his withering condemnation speech to the wealthy of Bradford), to design Saltaire. The style they suggested was Italianate, Venetian Gothic. The new mill was opened on 20 September 1853.

850 houses were built for his workers. Saltaire also had its own park, church, school, hospital, library and a whole range of different shops. Fresh water was piped into each home from Saltaire's own 500,000 gallon reservoir. Gas was also laid on to provide lighting and heating. Unlike the people of Bradford, every family in Saltaire had its own outside lavatory. Salt also arranged for public baths and wash-houses to be built in Saltaire. Titus was also the first employer in Bradford to institute the ten hour working day.

Titus married Caroline Whitlam in 1830. They had a long and happy marriage, parenting eleven children. Caroline was reportedly a strong woman and there is some debate about the extent to which she could tell Titus what to do, and the extent to which he would listen. A wonderful example is that on the completion of Saltaire’s Italianate church, Caroline asked for a balcony to be built so that she and her family could sit above the common people. Titus wanted to sit amongst the congregation so that he could hear what was been said about him. To oblige his wife he built her the balcony, but he also built a large chandelier which directly blocked the view of the pulpit for anyone sat in the balcony. Caroline had got her balcony but she ended up sitting down with the people, just as Titus had wanted.

The streets of Saltaire bear the names of Titus, his wife and children, the architects Mawson and Lockwood, and also those of Titus’ maids and Mistresses.

Titus was said to be Tee-Total however it seems that his aversion was not to alcohol as such, but rather to pubs which, being places where men met, could be places of political subversion, which he feared. Union’s were banned in Saltaire and he put workers of different 'ranks' in the same street so that one could keep an eye on the other. He also built 'watch-towers' into his houses and factory so 'his people' could be kept an eye on. This was to compensate for police, who were not allowed in the village. In his village, he was the law.

Titus even built toilets inside the Mill, virtually unheard of at the time, but as with all aspects of business, Titus was shrewd and he used the urine in the dying process. The liquid from the toilets was piped down into the cellars where the component which could be used as a dye fixative was extracted. There was one subgroup of workers whose urine however was even more effective as a dye fixative, and that was red haired women. As a result they had to use a special toilet uniquely for them, the urine of which went to a separate vat where it was used in the dying process of premium garments, garments that, for example, may have found their way to Queen Victoria.

Saltaire has many Almshouses which were for the retired workers to live in. To this day some of the Almshouses have plaques outside displaying the names and age at death of some of the residents who lived there. The ages range from 60 – 81 yrs old, not bad when the life expectancy in Bradford was 18.

Outside Victoria Hall, Saltaire’s Town Hall can be seen four stone lions representing Peace, War, Determination and Vigilance. They were originally carved for Trafalgar Square but due to a dispute between the carver and the commissioner (perhaps they were too small), they ended up in Saltaire. There is a local legend which says that when the lions hear the clock strike midnight they jump off their pedestals and go down to the river for a drink.

Inside Victoria Hall the social life of the village was played out. This included practice rooms for the Brass Band, games rooms and a busy schedule of speeches. Amongst the records of speeches given are: Titus Junior gave a lantern show on his Middle Eastern travels (not well attended by the ordinary workers, apparently) and Catherine Salt began a popular “cottage cookery” class.

Saltaire had a Works Dining room for workers from outside the village. 600 people would come for breakfast which was traditionally a bowl of porridge for 1d, and for lunch there was a meat and potato pie for 2d.

Residents of Saltaire were referred to as ‘Inmates’ and rules were many:-
Stone throwing, spitting, and smoking in alcoves, gambling, begging, drunks, unaccompanied children under 8 and indecent language were all forbidden. It was also forbidden to hold a religious or political demonstration. Any unofficial games of football were also banned.

Titus Salt built Milner field near to Saltaire. It was a huge mansion which was built for Titus Junior, who unfortunately died young at 44. Ruskin, walked by the house many times as he had a friend who lived in nearby Bingley. Ruskin described Milner field as a "Gothic monstrosity". All owners of Milner field seemed to die young, the next two after Titus Jnr both died at 47. The house was said to be Jinxed and eventually fell into disrepair after no one seemed to want to live there. Only ten or so years ago a young woman hung herself from one of the tree’s overlooking the ruins of Milner field.

Titus Salt died in the comfort of his home at the age of 73. His civic funeral took place on a bitterly cold day in Bradford, but one hundred thousand people turned out to pay their respects.

More Examples of Georges Bataille being a Dick

"Eroticism is assenting to life even in death."
Georges Bataille
Dick!

"I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction."
Georges Bataille
Dick!

Keeper of The Arcades Project, Georges Bataille was born in Billon, France. Bataille had a terrible childhood. His mother attempted suicide several times. Bataille loved his father, who became blind and suffered from general paralysis due to syphilis, and died in 1915. In 1916-17 Bataille served in the army, but was discharged because of tuberculosis. Ill health troubled Bataille all his life, and he suffered from periods of depression.

The Tears of Eros (1961) was Bataille's final book, an excursion in the history of eroticism and violence. In the last chapter he wrote about the Chinese torture pictured above, showing "an ecstatic man who is cut to hundred pieces". The strange, exalted facial expression of the man fascinated Bataille: "I have never stopped being obsessed by the image of this pain, at once ecstatic (?) and intolerable " Bataille actually claimed that meditating in front of the photograph allowed him to communicate with the torture victim:

"This young and seductive Chinese man… left to the work of the executioner – I loved him with a love in which the sadistic instinct played no part: he communicated his pain to me or perhaps the excessive nature of his pain, and it was precisely that which I was seeking, not so as to take pleasure in it, but in order to ruin in me that which is opposed to ruin."

What a Dick!

The image comes from Taiwan. A young man, probably rendered semi-unconscious with opium, is meticulously hacked into pieces. The photograph captures the moment when his arms have been severed, his genitals cut off and pieces of flesh sliced off his chest. Surrounded by attentive observers (some of them bending their head so they can see better), the man looks upward with an air of unspeakable horror and/or rapture. The image dates from 1905, a time when China was opening up to the West. Indeed, a number of early documents brought back to the West deal with violence, chaos and cruelty, confirming the Orientalist construct of China as a mysterious, barbaric and dangerous place.

Louis Aragon

Louis Aragon (1897–1982), was a French poet and novelist. Aragon's novel 'Paysan de Paris' (1926) mythologized the arcades and parks of Paris and was a key inspiration for Benjamin and 'The Arcades Project'. 'Paysan de Paris' celebrated the city as a place of stimulating encounters in its cafés and parks.

Aragon was also a celebrated love poet, the great theme of his poetry was his love for his wife, Elsa. However, after the death of Elsa in 1970, Aragon came out as gay. He became a raging Queen appearing at gay pride parades in a pink convertible.

An example of a Love poem for his Wife:-

"Let's spit the two of us let's spit

On what we loved

On what we loved the two of us

Yes because this poem the two of us

Is a waltz tune and I imagine

What is dark and incomparable passing between us

Like a dialogue of mirrors abandoned

In a baggage-claim somewhere say Foligno

Or Bourboule in the Auvergne."

I don’t know, but I sort of feel that if that’s an example of one of his love poems to his wife, well, maybe the clues were there….

The 17 year old Ruskin gets his heart broken

THE LAST SMILE

SHE sat beside me yesternight,

With lip and eye so sweetly smiling,

So full of soul, of life, of light,

So beautifully care-beguiling,

That she had almost made me gay,

Had almost charmed the thought away

(Which, like the poisoned desert wind,

Came sick and heavy o'er my mind),

That memory soon mine all would be,

And she would smile no more for me.

Ruskin's Diary June 15th 1886

"June 15th. Sound sleep after cucumber and cream cheese. Rather enjoyed a bit of absurd French novel."

Kafka is coming

Benjamin on Kafka:-
“In order to do justice to the purity and beauty of Kafka’s person, one must never lose sight of one thing: these are characteristics of a man who has failed.”

Kafka's great hero was Flaubert. Kafka's favourite quote by Flaubert was from an occasion when Flaubert had visited a married friend with a large family, Gustave said ruefully "Ils sont dans le vrai" - "They are in truth". This perfectly conveys Flaubert's and Kafka's feelings of the immeasurable loss of their lack of conventional lives and families.

Benjamin the Surrealist

Walter Benjamin was fascinated with surrealism. It was his discovery of surrealism that really gave birth to The Arcades Project.

He described the genesis of The Arcades Project to Adorno thus:

“It opens with Aragon (one of the founders of the surrealist movement) – the Paysan de Paris. Evenings, lying in bed, I could never read more than two to three pages by him because my heart started to pound so hard that I had to put the book down.”

The Arcades Project was to be Benjamin’s surrealist masterpiece, but the difference between Benjamin and the other surrealists was that whilst their work is dreamlike, Benjamin is striving for a surrealist aesthetic of wakefulness.

As the first draft of The Arcades Project states:-
“Differences between the tendencies of this piece of work and Aragon; whilst Aragon perseveres in the realm of dreams, my goal here is to find the constellation of wakefulness.”

Ruskin's Grave

Here we see the cross which marks Ruskin’s grave, designed by William Gershom Collingwood, a student of Ruskin’s who so admired his teacher that he came to Brantwood to devote himself to Ruskin’s service.
The cross depicts various aspects of Ruskin’s life and work. Despite having been ill for some time with Madness, Ruskin finally died of influenza. He could have had a grave in Westminster Abbey but he preferred to be buried near his home in Coniston.

Ruskin's Diary June 14th 1867

"June 14th. Friday. A most dismal day, I know not why. Walked up to Crystal palace and back. Saw frightful blacks playing in transept. Ugly letter from Carlyle in evening."

A drawing of Crystal palace from Ruskin's time can be seen below. Quite what people in period costume are doing walking with tame dinosaurs is anyones guess. It seems strange that Ruskin does not mention this:-

And what on earth are "frightful blacks"?

Ruskin's Yorkshire Paradise

Ruskin called Malham Cove his, "Yorkshire Paradise", calling it "so lovely that scarce a branch could be gathered without injury." He referred to the cove as having the "sweep of a Coliseum wall."

Benjamin, Ready for Anything

Photo of Walter Benjamin in 1938. Benjamin enclosed this photo in a letter to his friend Scholem, who commented on Benjamin's "grim expression" and the fact that he looked "ready for anything".

Walter Benjamin likes Ugly Girls

Walter Benjamin on fancying ugly girls:-

"He who loves is attached to the "faults" of the beloved, to the whims and weaknesses of a woman. Wrinkles in the face, moles, shabby clothes, and a lopsided walk bind him more lastingly and relentlessly than any beauty. This has long been known.

Our feeling, dazzled, flutters like a flock of birds in the woman's radiance. And as birds seek refuge in the leafy recesses of a tree, feelings escape into the shaded wrinkles, the awkward movements and inconspicuous blemishes of the body we love, where they can lie low in safety. And no passer-by would guess that it is just here, in what is defective and censurable, that the fleeting darts of adoration nestle."

Age of Consent

Intrigued, after yesterdays blog which touched on the issue of the age of consent during Ruskin's life TheLeedsArcadesProject decided to do some research using The Internet. What we discovered was that in 1885 the age of consent in Great Britain was raised from 15 to 16.

More intriguingly we started to look at the current age of consents around the world only to find that surprisingly in Spain and in South Korea the age of consent is 13.

In Colombia and Peru the age of consent for males is 14 and for females 12.
In Tunisia for both sexes it is 20.
And in the Antarctic there is no age of consent at all.

Brantwood No.4

TheLeedsArcadesProject decided to travel to Brantwood, Ruskin’s old home in the hope of learning more about Ruskin's life and family.

In the foyer of Ruskin’s home TheLeedsArcadesProject saw a picture of what appeared to be a young Ruskin. I decided to ask the Room Guide how old Ruskin was when the portrait was painted.

Room Guide: “Ah, that’s not John Ruskin, that’s his father, John James Ruskin. He’s very feminine looking isn’t he? I think he looks gay. He had a lot of male friends in London at that time. He was a part of a group with a lot of gay men. Anyway I was going to tell you about my book I’m writing, hmmmm, it should be quite interesting, it traces my Mothers life. It starts with her mother who was a scullery maid in a large household, they’d made their money from tea plantations. Very rich. Very rich! Anyway when she was 14, she got pregnant with Mother”

TheLeedsArcadesProject: “Ah, oh.”

Room Guide: “Yes! Anyway, it was a big scandal and she was shuffled away for 9months. I think, well let me tell you, Mother always talked about one of the sons from that house and she called him Uncle Clarence. He was always very kind to her. At christmas he always bought her lovely gifts, no one else ever did. So obviously, it was him, he was Mothers father. He obviously had some kind of affair with Grandma, which, well, she was a maid. Anyway, I figured it out and when Grandma was 14, Uncle Clarence was 30.”

TheLeedsArcadesProject: “Wow, that’s quite a difference. Was that even legal back then?”

Room Guide: “I was shocked too when Mother first told me, but she used to say that back then you could ‘buy a virgin on the streets of London for £5’.”

TheLeedsArcadesProject: “Blimey”

Room Guide: “So, Mother was born and kept hidden in the house until she was of an age to be a maid herself.”

TheLeedsArcadesProject: “Wow, I wonder, what was the age of consent back then? I mean, when could Ruskin and Rose have married, if she’d wanted to?”

Room Guide: “Anyway, I’m writing it all down, it’s coming along quite nicely. Mother would be pleased.”

TheLeedsArcadesProject: “Cool. Hey listen we really have got to get moving. More Ruskin to see. Cheers though.”

Turtles

Benjamin on the Flaneur:-
"The street becomes a dwelling for the flaneur: To him the shiny, enamelled signs of businesses are at least as good a wall ornament as an oil painting. News-stands are his libraries and the terraces of cafes are the balconies from which he looks down on his household after his work is done."

Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable for flaneurs to take turtles for a walk in the arcades. The flaneurs liked to have the turtles set the pace for them.

Lost fragment of Benjamin

“Julie swept her hair to one side, and Benjamin saw again, how lovely her face was, with a straight small nose, and her lips pale and pink. Her eyes burned distantly, like moons on early winter mornings.”

The strength of Walter Benjamin's commitment to Marxism

The Reason Benjamin became a Marxist:-
Famous as a Marxist critic, a key player in the so called Frankfurt School, hotbed of Marxist thought, Benjamin was a man who took up Marxism only because it was erotocised for him by his Latvian lover, Asja Lacis. He basically got interested in order to 'get in' with her. Without her it is doubt full if he would ever have moved in the direction of Marxism.

Some dubious facts about Hitler. Part 1

Benjamin came a cropper as a direct result of Adolf's madness, here are some examples:-

• He had sex with his own (much younger) niece. She said "i let him do everything to me". She later committed suicide. After her death he kept her room untouched, like a shrine.
• He killed his wife half an hour after marrying her.
• He wanted to cut the noses off Jewish women so that men wouldn't want to have sex with them.
• He thought that smoking causes cancer.
• Whilst he railed against pornography, he also collected not only nude paintings (at one point having the biggest collection in Europe), but also the dirty stories that used to be run in the National Socialist newspaper.

Be content with little, A poem by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

Form but few projects, cultivate few friends,

Content with little space, do good to all

and if alas, this happy system ends

the recollection, with no pain recall.

The Cutty Sark

The recent burning of the Cutty Sark and the announcement of a multi-million pound restoration grant has led to John Ruskin and his views on restoration being quoted extensively in the press. Ruskin condemned restoration as usually blighting the beauty of a thing. Ruskin, did however love ships, once saying, “The mind of man never conceived and the hand of man never contrived a work of more exquisite beauty than that wonderful creation of oak and hemp known as a Ship of the Line”. Ruskin was contemporary with the Cutty Sark, it having being built in 1869.

After her launch, the Cutty Sark made seven journeys to China in the 1970’s, but it is the eighth journey that is the most interesting. This journey was known as the “Hell Ship” voyage. The captain died, possible of shock, after discovering on arrival in China, that all the tea had already been loaded onto steam ships and that he therefor had no cargo. The first mate, James Wallace, took over as captain but threw himself overboard after his crew mutinied and the ship was becalmed in the Java Sea.

The Cutty Sarks fortunes were later revived under a Captain Woodget, who bred collie dogs on board the ship, roller skated on the deck and was adored by his crew.

Chatsworth

As we have discussed previously, Thorton’s Arcade has a portrait of The Duchess of Devonshire hanging over its entrance. In order to discover the truth about Georgiana Cavendish, The Duchess of Devonshire and her supposedly rather odd love life TheLeedsArcadesProject decided to travel to Chatsworth house, the ancestral home of the Devonshire family, to try to get some expert help:

As we wandered around the house we asked several of the room guides about Georgiana but found that they did not want to talk about her, preferring to focus more on the current Duke's activities (horse racing) or on the house's connections with the recent film of Pride and Prejudice (some of it was filmed there). Eventually in the room housing the portrait of Georgiana by Sir Joshua Reynolds, we finally found a guide willing to talk to us about the Duchess' life:-

Room Guide: "The 5th Duke of Devonshire had a wife, Georgiana who we see here, and a mistress, Bess. Here at Chatsworth they had more than a few drink- and drug-fuelled parties. However, although he presided over a house of debauchery, it was during the 5th Duke's life that Chatsworth started to become known to the outside world. The Duke and his wife invited prominent writers and politicians. Daniel Defoe was a frequent visitor, and Jane Austin renamed the house "Pemberley" in Pride and Prejudice.

One interesting story is about how the Duke could not get his wife pregnant and of course, at that time an heir was everything. In order to get pregnant, Georgiana consulted a celebrated fertility quack. Dr. James Graham, whose Temple of Health and Hymen catered to the childless nobility."

TheLeedsArcadesProject: "Temple of Health and Hymen, that's great."

Room Guide: "Yes, Infertile couples paid £50 a night, a huge amount at the time, to make love on the 'electro-magnetic bed' in his 'celestial chamber' while a pressure-cylinder pumped 'magnetic fire' into the room."

TheLeedsArcadesProject: "Wow"

Room Guide: "He even had an orchestra ouside the room playing relaxing music. Unfortunately it didn’t work and the Duke became dissatisfied with his wife and took Bess as his lover. "

A LeedsArcadesProject note:-{Bess was the second daughter of the notably avaricious Earl-Bishop of Bristol, and had made a bad marriage, in her teens, with a dissolute Irish M.P. After Bess learned that he had seduced her maid, the couple had separated, and she had found herself, according to the laws of the time, without a penny. Georgiana fell in love with Bess and persuaded the Duke, to be equally as smitten. Soon Bess was part best friend, part lesbian lover and part paid companion to Georgiana and full time lover to the Duke.}

TheLeedsArcadesProject: "Didn't Georgiana come to a bad end or something? I seem to remember her falling on desperate times."

Room Guide: "Yes, in later life she became depressed and turned to drink, gambling and also taking large quantities of Opium. This left her dissipated and badly in debt. She was also a classic bulimic, she would starve herself and then go on eating binges. Finally, she suffered some serious eye infections which left her half blind and disfigured.

When Georgiana died, Bess got the duke, but when he died, the family turned against Bess and she was forced to move to Rome where she ended up as a cardinal's mistress."

On not knowing where to look when in the lift with others

Walter Benjamin on life in the city:-

"Someone who sees without hearing is much more uneasy than someone who hears without seeing. In this there is something characteristic of the sociology of the big city. Interpersonal relationships in big cities are distinguished by a marked preponderance of the activity of the eye over the activity of the ear. The main reason for this is the public means of transportation. Before the development of buses, railroads and trams in the nineteenth century, people had never been in a position of having to look at one another for long minutes or even hours without speaking to one another."