Local Councils Hate Art #85,298 --- The de Morgan Connection

[Claverhouse]

In Britain, and most of the world to some extent, local councils of any type administrative ( parish/town/borough/city/county ) or political ( conservative/new labour/liberal/whatever ) have taken to heart their roles as being representatives of the common man and waged war upon tradition and the arts with all the zest of thousands of little Ceauşescus. They particularly like pulling down old buildings in order to make developers rich.


In another post today, I alluded to Lewis Carroll, and glancing on the web to get it exactly right, I noticed not only a Jungian interpretation of Alice --- no more pointless and unlikely than any other interpretings --- but also a blog partly devoted to him. Out of this, From Somewhere in Time, I noticed an entry mentioning that:

Went to the de Morgan Centre yesterday. It has only been open for a few years, and was beautifully fitted out in a super old building that was given to the local people in 1887. However, I'd made an urgent decision to visit, as I'd heard it was to close at the end of this week, with no definite plans to re-open. The reason? The council wants to get its hands on the building it is in, and has broken its lease.

Plus a consideration of the Livesey Museum:

The Livesey looked after the needs of children in a deprived area, and was unique. Having seen the surroundings of the de Morgan Centre, it seems to me an absolute beacon of elegance and culture in the grotty, dirty, run down dump that is Wandsworth West Hill. Both museums could hardly be needed more as cultural and intellectual oases - as affirmation that life's horizons don't have to be limited by the pub and the bookie's and the Tesco container lorries grinding past.


One commentator there writes:

The Wandworth council is subtly getting the message over that you don't HAVE to visit grotty places like Wandsworth where they take pains to destroy beautiful things.


Which really is Gordon Brown's Post-Thatcherite Message on behalf of the Nation as a whole...



Claverhouse

 

[Jordan~]

This happened to Dundee in the '60s. We used to have a beautiful city (so I'm told) until a council leader who owned a demolition firm got his hands on it. He tore down half of the Victorian inner city and vomitted brutalist nightmares all over it. Now it's a city of concrete slabs that look like they're melting whenever it rains. I long for the old Wellgate, when it was a street rather than a hideous shopping centre, or for the waterfront before the construction of the infamous council building - a grey, Orwellian slab that looms ugly and tall over the beige terraces of the city centre behind - and the Hilton hotel and Olympia public baths, both about as pleasing on the eye as a dull knife.

 

[snowqueen]

yep I saw Dundee in the 60s (grew up in St Andrews) and it was amazing if rather run down - but it could have been more like Nottingham or Manchester if they'd left it alone and developed it more sympathetically.

 

[merzbau]

i actually like brutalist architecture. when it's done well, it has a certain imposing monolithic grandeur that appeals to my sense of aesthetics. i can understand why people are hostile towards it, though; it's abstract, harsh grey and it ages terribly. there again, though - i like that in a cityscape.
though i'd never bulldoze a lovely old stone building and replace it, that's pretty stupid.

a similar malaise gripped my home town back in the fashion-conscious 60s. all the buildings along main street had long verandas covered in victorian iron tracery, which the council actually paid owners to tear down and scrap, partly due to some misguided "beautification" scheme but mostly because they wanted to widen the roads. it's been a horrible and sterile town ever since. and the council just released spending plans for new reproduction ironwork to replace the originals at an incredible cost. what a difference the tourism dollar makes.

 

[Cogwulf]

If you're in Britain you should read Private Eye magazine, it's mainly political satire, but it has an article which features a story like this every issue. It also prints stories about the dodgier side of the government which no other media seems interested in for some reason

 

[Ragnar]

I gave up Private Eye 2 years ago as part of a drowning into depression and rebirth: I had taken it since I was 15. It seemed... stuck in the same old past I needed to discard.

I also stopped reading any news at all, since those who scriptwrite the future had started recycling the same plots in an endless loop --- but that was a different thing...



Claverhouse

 

[merzbau]

i don't read private eye, but i do read viz.. is that sort of the same thing?

 

[Claverhouse]

Nah, PE is a satirical fortnightly that has some stuff on politics, some cartoons and some sniping at entertainment and media people. Like Punch in the 1850s it started out radical --- as radical as Public School [ Public School means Private School in Britain ] types angry at the tired post-war generation in charge could be in the 1960s --- then morphed into the licensed clown of the Establishment. Like Krokodil (?) in the Soviet Union it is allowed greater liberties than really radical publications of the left or right.

A universal consensus state can always laugh at itself gently. Advocating a trotskyist overthrow, or suggest limiting immigration in print, will bring the knock on the door.




Claverhouse

 

[merzbau]

sounds like viz to me...