The death was announced this week of the reclusive American writer J.D. Salinger, author of one massively influential novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Written in 1951, Salinger’s tale of teenage rebellion and intellectual precocity has to date sold some 65 million copies and remains a much-loved work of American literature. Salinger’s death will be widely reported, yet this week saw the passing of another bestselling US writer, one far less well-known than Salinger, yet someone who gave voice to rebellion and alienation in other ways: Howard Zinn, who died aged 87 in Santa Monica, California.
First published in 1980, Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States tells the story of the U.S. from 1492 to the present from the perspective of American women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, working poor and immigrant labourers. It is a radically revisionist history of the States, yet since its release it has sold over 1 million copies, been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, German, Turkish, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Swedish, Norwegian, Czech, Portuguese, Russian, Greek and Hebrew, and taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country.
In a week when a Public Policy Polling nationwide survey also announced that the partisan right-wing news channel Fox News is the most trusted news network in the U.S., with an approval rating of 50 per cent, Zinn’s death has added resonance. Faced with criticism of the left-wing bias of his People’s History, Zinn was unrepentant. ‘It’s not an unbiased account; so what?’ he said in a recent interview for The New York Times. ‘If you look at history from the perspective of the slaughtered and mutilated, it’s a different story.’
It’s been announced that Claude Lévi-Strauss, the well-known French anthropologist, also regarded as one of the most influential Structuralist thinkers, has died, aged 100.
In case you forgot, Michael Jackson who sadly died yesterday at the age of 50, was the best combined singer and dancer of the 20th century. He never really arrived in the 21st. Probably his last great song is ‘Scream’ of 1995 (with Janet Jackson), which already tells his sad story: the isolation, the pressure.
Puberty stars like Boris Becker become narcissist idiots (Becker recently sold his entire wedding to TV stations and gazettes); child stars like Michael – with his plastic surgery, and Peter Pan sexual complex – become freaks. Genesis P. Orridge for example is a – great – freak too. He is admired for it often by the same people who have nothing but disdain for Jackson (and probably vice versa).
It would be great if P. Orridge could do a consoling cover version of ‘The Way you make me feel’ (here’s an interesting, almost-a-capella version).
It was announced this weekend that the novelist JG Ballard has died, following a long illness. The author of 19 novels and numerous short stories, Ballard exerted a huge influence over many artists, writers and filmmakers with his disquieting and vivid meditations on modernity, technology, violence, ecological crisis and psychological breakdown.
Obituaries on the BBC and the Guardian websites can be read here and here, respectively. An interview with Ballard by Ralph Rugoff, published in issue 34 of frieze, May 1997, can be read here. The website ballardian.com provides a comprehensive source of Ballard-related information, criticism and links.
Following the death of veteran television presenter Tony Hart at the age of 83 last Sunday, frieze asked artist Ryan Gander to consider the influence of Hart’s BBC programmes on him and others of his generation. Between 1954 and 2000, Hart presented a number of TV series – including Playbox (1954–59), Take Hart (1978-84), and Hartbeat (1984-93) – that introduced several generations of children to art. A regular feature of Hart’s TV shows was ‘The Gallery’, in which paintings, drawings and collages sent in by young viewers were displayed and discussed. Hart received two BAFTA awards and was given a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. He retired from regular TV work in 2001.
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I met Rolf Harris in a hotel lobby in Sydney last year. It’s funny being in Sydney as an artist working, and accidentally ending up sitting on a sofa chatting with ‘Ken yer see what it is yit?’ himself, waiting for the rain to stop. Rolf asked why I was there and I told him I was in the biennale – ironically he seemed a bit jealous, so I asked him about painting the Queen to appease him.
While I never met Tony Hart, I would say that Take Hart was an important part of my childhood. Since Hart’s sad death last week he has come up in quite a few conversations with friends. Now, as I try to remember him, it’s apparent that I am, in actuality, misremembering him already. That might not be a good thing, but there’s a reason for it.
I remember that Tony Hart wore a cravat and chinos, and I sort of remember chest hair, but I don’t know how much. He was a man with a soft gentle voice and there were normally two or three amazingly beautiful girls assisting him in each programme, though they seemed to be replaced by more amazingly beautiful girls far too regularly, but maybe I am making that up? I remember the little plasticine fella, Morph (pictured above), as well as his sidekick who was a vehicle to visually explain things to the viewer, but Tony was the one with the ideas.
I say I am misremembering him because I seem to be describing a slightly older version of the character Thomas the photographer played by David Hemmings (pictured above) in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1966). You see, I am building in my mind a picture of what we perceive to be an artist, what we might expect, and that’s confusing for me. It’s dangerous that we could end up remembering this man as an actor, or a cardboard cut-out of a character or TV presenter. I am convinced we should remember him as an artist’s artist.
A friend once told me in a pub that I shouldn’t be so dismissive of clichés, because a cliché is a cliché because everyone agrees on it. That is, because many people think the same thing individually, it’s not contagious – it’s just very, very popular. This means, of course, that most clichés are good images, ideas or relationships. Maybe I’m concerned that Tony Hart will be remembered as a cliché because I think all the really interesting artists are the ones that don’t want to ‘be’ artists, but, in a very simple sense, just ‘make work’ or ‘have ideas’. And similarly for those that ‘make that work’, a worse insult could not be imagined than, ‘it looks like art’.
Take Hart for me as a child – and similarly Hartbeat, which was broadcast between 1984 and 1993 – was purely about ideas: the act of doing and exploring, finding faces in inanimate objects, looking for doppelgängers of shapes, attempting to balance a mobile made from a feather and a brick. Tony Hart filled me with an energy to do and to explore, to look at things upside-down, or inside-out. This creative optimism was undoubtedly a product of Hart, but also a product of an era of British television of a much higher standard to that that we see today. Take Hart‘s successor Art Attack, presented by Neil Buchanan, for example… It’s just not good telly; it’s about making things ‘appear to be’, not ‘making things’.
Hart was a man responsible for millions of 6-to-8 year olds questioning whether they would rather be a fireman, a soldier, a teacher, a vet or an artist – and that’s amazing. And if we did choose artist, lets hope that our ideas are as good to us as we are to them. I get the impression that Tony Hart’s ideas really looked after him.
