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WELCOME TO THE EAST FINCHLEY OPEN ARTISTS SEPTEMBER NEWSLETTER
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THIS MONTH - Art & Propaganda - William Orpen - Toyin Ojih Odutola - Members News - Stephens House Appeal - Art on demand - and more
If you are viewing on gmail remember to click 'display images' and 'view entire message' when you reach the bottom.
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T H E W A Y F O R W A R D
As the lockdown restrictions start to ease the EFOA committee are monitoring possible opportunities for group exhibitions and events. Some individual members have already found ways of showing work and we hope you are able to support these. We hope to have our new website up and running in a few weeks and to show at least three online exhibitions before Christmas. One of our first will be the long-delayed Climate Change project, originally to be in the Offshoot Gallery just after lockdown was imposed. We will keep you up to date with developments.
The theme of this month’s newsletter is propaganda. The ‘fight’ against COVID 19 has been likened to a war – there is talk of ‘the blitz spirit’ and ‘let’s all get together to beat the enemy’ or as the Prime Minister put it ‘Let’s send Johnny Virus packing’ (just before he was hospitalised). The Government has had to engage in a substantial public information campaign, (i.e. propaganda), to focus our minds and to take precautions seriously.
In the first half of the 20th century there were two very big actual shooting wars and before TV and the internet and the digital age posters were a critical part of the propaganda effort.
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ART and PROPAGANDA
In the first half of the 20th Century, long before mass TV, the internet and the digital age, art played a prominent role in influencing people.
MIKE COLES writes
Until I started looking in to the issue I wasn’t aware of the heated academic debates centred around advertising and propaganda. On one side they are considered the same, on the other advertising is positive and beneficial (‘helping consumers to help themselves’) and propaganda is a type of misleading persuasive monologue or one-sided messages intended to coerce others to agree with an idea or take a particular action. (‘Your country needs you’)
Advertising aims to convince you to spend money to gain something you now want or to choose something you actually need over a competing product. Advertising claims might not be the truth. You might not truly need nor want the product. They try to make you want it. Their end goal is for you to spend your money towards their profit
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Propaganda aims to affect your thinking, but the goal is not the truth. A propagandist’s goal is not profit. The objective is to control your will and actions to meet the propagandist’s desires. They aim to effect both your actions and your motivations. The propagandist’s goal is control.
Advertising is factual (laughable given the notoriously weak Advertising Standards Authority) Propaganda is an opinion. (Political or religious, but also economic if it gets you to spend money)
Both consider — like Machiavelli — that the end justifies the means, and in both cases the means could be devious, spurious and fake (as well as positive and justified).
Anyway, that’s enough of that. We all like to feel that we take advertising with a pinch of salt – is Coke ‘the real thing?’ – the real what? – the real can of drink that has 12 spoonful’s of sugar? Does that mean Diet Coke is medically approved as part of a sugar-controlled diet? Or is it just regular Coke with a chemical sweetener? I’m sure you get the idea and I doubt it ever bothers you. The internet on the other hand is harder to rationalise and controls our life to a much greater degree. (there may be little we can do about it even if we wanted to).
OK, moving on - In the first half of the twentieth century governments around the world had to motivate their citizens behaviours during two World Wars and several other major conflicts. Radio and political oratory were important but so too were posters. Posters that had to put forward an important message forcefully – a process we now identify as propaganda – influencing people’s opinions and actions - from the Governments point of view ‘for the common good’
Propaganda - The word itself was coined by the Catholic Church to describe its efforts to discredit Protestant teachings in the 1600's. Over the years, almost every nation has used propaganda to unite its people in wartime. Both sides spread propaganda during World War I, for example. But in the 1930’s the Nazis were notable for making propaganda a key element of government policy even before Germany went to war again. One of Hitler’s first acts as Chancellor was to establish the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, demonstrating his belief that controlling information was as important as controlling the military and the economy
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In the early 1980’s American professor Robert Cialdini, considered the leading social scientist in the field, after extensive analysis, published his six principles of influence (also known as the six weapons of influence) which has become the benchmark for how propaganda works, both past and present: -
What are the factors that cause one person to say yes to another person? Which techniques most effectively use these factors to bring about such compliance?
Cialdini's theoretical perspective is that to deal with a complex world, the human brain has evolved spontaneous or reflex responses to various phenomena.
His six principles are: Reciprocity, Commitment/consistency, Social proof, Authority, Liking and Scarcity.
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In pre-war Germany the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had a well-known phrase: “Repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth.” Unfortunately, Goebbels used this principle to operate a black propaganda campaign. Even Hitler himself in Mein Kampf (My struggle) ‘claimed:
“All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses.”
This is all very well but what about the art?
Here are some posters which reflect at least one of the six principles. The artistic styles are varied but generally are direct and strong – and not too complicated to understand. One interesting feature is that, with men called up to fight, a lot of the propaganda is directed at women, to take what would have been in the past, men’s work – in direct opposition to previous Victorian values that put women in the home as mothers and homemakers. This new image of woman made them unusually muscular and determined.
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And of course there are always parodies…..
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UPCOMING AT BURGH HOUSE - 6 WAYS WITH COLOUR
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A official First World War artist you may not be familiar with - employed by the military but who broke ranks
MIKE COLES writes:-
Born in Co. Dublin on 27th November 1878, the son of a solicitor, William Orpen was an Irish/British painter, who by the outbreak of the First World War was renowned as one of the leading fashionable portraitists of his day.
Orpen was a child prodigy and came to prominence whilst still a student at the Slade School of Art in London. Having been mentored by John Singer Sargent, he achieved rapid success and established for himself a strong reputation, particularly as a portrait artist. In 1910 he was elected ARA.
With the arrival of war in 1914 Orpen's role was initially limited to the auctioning of blank canvases upon which the purchaser's portrait would be later painted – the funds raised going to the Red Cross.
Towards the close of 1915, however, he felt obliged to take a more active role in the war effort. Having completed a portrait of Winston Churchill and with the assistance (and influence) of the British Army Quartermaster-General, Sir John Cowans - whose portrait Orpen was currently preparing, he secured a commission into the Army Service Corps.
Initially tasked with routine office work at Kensington Barracks he came to the attention of Charles Masterman, who was responsible for the War Propaganda Bureau. At the end of 1916 Masterman recruited him as a war artist, where he was joined by others including Paul Nash, Muirhead Bone and Wyndham Lewis.
He was the most prolific of the official artists sent by Britain to the Western Front where he produced drawings and paintings of ordinary soldiers, casualties, and German prisoners of war, as well as portraits of generals and politicians. Cowans had assisted Orpen by arranging for him to be promoted to Major. He (doubtless correctly) believed that he would be regarded more seriously if he held a higher military rank.
One of his most notable and controversial paintings was Dead Germans in a Trench, which was banned by the then Military Censor. However, using his high-level contacts Orpen had the ban overturned and the painting was exhibited and published.
Another controversial work was Zonnebeke. Zonnebeke, in Flanders, was the scene of bitter fighting as part of the Passchendaele campaign from June to November 1917. A large British offensive against enemy installations initially succeeded. But then prolonged rainfall and heavy shelling transformed the battlefield into a swamp, and the Germans, operating from concrete pillboxes, took a heavy toll of Allied troops with mustard gas and machine-gun fire. At some points at Zonnebeke the Allied and German trenches there were just 20 feet apart, and there was terrible loss of life. In a series of attacks and counter-attacks Zonnebeke itself was completely destroyed. When the British finally halted the Passchendaele offensive in November 1917, both sides had each lost around 250,000 men, and the Allied lines had advanced just five miles.
Orpen described in his letters the shocking experience of seeing numbers of corpses lying unburied among the flooded shell holes, in a landscape totally empty of life. In his pictures of the wasted battlefields, and in his portraits of the exhausted or shell-shocked men, he got physically and emotionally closer to the full horrors of the First World War than most of the other official artists
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Late in 1917 Orpen spent two weeks in hospital with blood poisoning. There he met a young volunteer Red Cross worker named Yvonne Aubicq. The two began a relationship that was to last ten years and Orpen painted several portraits of her. Two of these he submitted to the Official Censor early in 1918. He named both paintings A Spy and in March 1918 was interviewed by the Censor, Lt Col Arthur Lee,
Lee made it clear that if the title was intended as a joke it was in very bad taste coming so soon after the execution of Mata Hari, but if the subject really was a spy then he could be facing a court-martial.
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(Orpen gave Lee a story that the woman in the picture was a German spy who had been executed by the French but who, in an attempt to save herself, had at the last moment revealed herself naked in front of the firing squad).
Lee had Orpen recalled to London to be reprimanded at the War Office. There, he retracted the firing squad story but was ordered to remain in London. He ignored this and, illegally, made his way back to France. There he contrived to receive a phone call from Field Marshall Haig's private office, within earshot of several of Arthur Lee's colleagues from Army Intelligence, inviting him to dinner with Haig to discuss what he would like to paint next. Lee dropped his objections to Orpen working in France, and in return he agreed to rename the two pictures The Refugee.
His connections to the senior ranks of the British Army had allowed him to stay in France longer than the other artists, and although he was knighted in the 1918 King's birthday honours list, and also elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy, his determination to serve as a war artist had cost him both his health and his social standing. He remained bitter about the human loss and blamed the politicians and generals for asking the ordinary soldier to make unbearable sacrifices.
Post war he returned to portraiture and became ever more successful and richer but was drinking heavily and had several failed relationships although he never officially divorced his wife Grace Knewstub. He became depressed and bitter and remained controversial to the end.
Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, KBE, RA, RHA became seriously ill in May 1931, and, after suffering periods of memory loss, died aged 52 in London, on 29 September 1931, and was buried in Putney.
In 2018 Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, a keen Orpen collector, unveiled a statue of Orpen in his birthplace of Stillorgan, South Dublin.
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A Countervailing Theory The Barbican
An interesting new exhibition now on at the Barbican featuring the drawing of Toyin Ojih Odutola
Toyin Ojih Odutola was born in Ife, Nigeria, in 1985. She moved to the US aged five, first to Berkeley, California, then to Huntsville, Alabama, where her father worked as a professor and her mother as a nurse. She is known for her intricate portraits drawn with ink, pastel and charcoal. Zadie Smith called her “one of the most exciting young artists working today”, and has written an essay in the catalogue for Ojih Odutola’s exhibition A Countervailing Theory.
Countervail present participle: countervailing
To offset the effect of (something) by countering it with something of equal force.
Her work deals with narratives about race, identity, and class. Asked by the Guardian if the powerful black women she created could be seen as oppressors she said-
“That’s not the question I am asking. It’s reductive and misleading. I’m more interested in how power dynamics play out. People often argue that if you’ve been subjugated your whole life, and you’ve seen how power is abused, you would treat people differently, you wouldn’t be an oppressor. And though that may be true, it’s also an individualist view. Anyone is capable of harming another person, whether they’ve been subjugated or not. It’s when groups of people who cannot see one another exist within an asymmetrical system that oppression thrives. That’s what drove the story for me.
When I was studying art in school, I was pushed towards identity art. Because I am a black woman, they were like, the only thing of worth you can offer is yourself. But as I started working professionally, I realised that what I really like is telling stories. It freed me up from being beholden to my own story. My story’s not that interesting. You can find out where I was born on Google. What I’m interested in is the “could” – the possibility of something – not the “should” or the “would”.
Her work is inspired by both art history and popular culture, as well as her own personal history—being born in Nigeria then moving as a child to America where she was raised in conservative Alabama. A Countervailing Theory tells the story of an imaginary ancient society ruled by women, set in a surreal landscape inspired by the ancient rock formations of the Jos Plateau in Nigeria.
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Admission is free but time slots have to be booked online in advance
Social distancing and masks required
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2020/event/toyin-ojih-odutola-a-countervailing-theory
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COVID ART
Multi-talented EFOA Artist Judith Devons has imagined lockdown life for many in this evocative photo
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Leading EFOA ceramacist Jo Pethybridge been accepted for London Potters on line sale on Instagram
Details to be announced https://www.instagram.com/london.potters/?hl=en
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STEPHENS HOUSE & GARDENS APPEAL
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ABOUT EAST FINCHLEY OPEN ARTISTS
Find out about us on our website www.eastfinchleyopen.org.uk
There you will find details of all our current members plus photo's of their work and contact details plus information on recent and upcoming exhibitions
MEMBERSHIP: If you are interested in joining East Finchley Open Artists please contact the Membership Secretary Monica Peiser
empeiser@gmail.com
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