Batman: The Dark Knight

I enjoyed The Dark Knight and I thought it was good, despite being at least half an hour too long.

Of course, all the talk is about Heath Ledger, and he is very good, although it is a gift for an actor to play someone totally insane without any necessity to pull it back for realism, and there is no question that his death added to the hype.

People seem to have forgotten Jack Nicholson in the 1989 version, although I thought his joker was equally good, if not better.

Batman is still my favourite of all the superheroes - probably because he's not actually so super. He doesn't have any special powers, can't turn into anything else, and doesn't come from another planet. He has to rely on gadgets, guile and an innate sense of morailty.

He doesn't work entirely alone either; Albert knows who he is and in various versions there are Robin, Batgirl, and the man in the cave who makes stuff.

He's dark, moody, and obscenely rich, yet he battles on the side of good. And, as he says, 'Chicks dig the car.'

Grimm Stuff

Grimm Stuff is an exhibition on at the National Library Gallery until 8th November, and it’s well worth seeing. Don’t worry; I’m not going to dive off into the realms of poetry this time, although it is tempting. The link between art and poetry is a fascinating one as they are both heightened forms of expression that may clarify or obfuscate depending on the intention of the artists.

Anyway, enough of that. This exhibition is made up of folktales and fairy stories from the Dorothy Neal White and National Children’s collections. Folktales have their origins in oral traditions and they may feature the staples we have come to know – magic; fairies; goblins; witches; ogres. Around the world they are used by authors to preserve the native traditions of their own culture, or of one that is perceived to be threatened.

The tales were gathered by re-tellers such as Madame d’Aulnoy and Charles Perrault (late seventeenth century) and the Grimm Brothers in the late nineteenth century. The Brothers Grimm were supposedly the first to write down the stories without changes, but they actually reshaped the language and the plots. Their work inspired others to collect folk and fairytales, and have since attracted the leading illustrators of each generation.

Hans Christian Andersen created his own stories (The Princess and the Pea; The Tinder Box) and paved the way for the popularity of fairytales in the second half of the nineteenth century through such writers as Charles Kingsley and Lewis Carrol.

The old fairy tales are actually remarkable for their unpleasantness; there are no happy endings and often not even the hero or heroine escapes with their life. The bawdiness seems shocking to modern readers; awaking with a kiss after being asleep for 100 years is far chaster than the story of the rape that woke her in the original version – the quick marriage had nothing to do with love at first sight but was rather about burying the shame of illegitimacy.

In the early versions of Cinderella, her features were also transformed by the fairy godmother along with her gown and accoutrements. She was actually plain and the prince’s task was to recognise her inherent loveliness rather than her physical beauty. This gives the tale an incredibly different aspect from the sanitised Disney version we generally know. Some of these stories are obviously politically incorrect to current audiences and so Little Black Sambo has become The Story of Little Babji.

In the exhibition there are illustrators I recognise and who swoop me back to my childhood, such as Eric Carle (responsible for more than just The Very Hungry Caterpillar); Mervyn Peake (seriously weird); Ernest Shepard (of course more famous for Winnie the Pooh, but he also illustrated Hans Christian Andersen); Quentin Blake (again, more famous for his illustrious – oh, my sides! – partnership with Roald Dahl); and Maurice Sendak – known for Where the Wild Things Are. Parents were afraid those illustrations would frighten children but his view was that ‘through fantasy children receive catharsis for their otherwise ungovernable feelings’. Hmmm.

Jan Pienowski, whom I always thought was a woman, contributes some simply stunning illustrations with trademark bold colours forming the background to stylish, romantic and dramatic silhouettes. There is fairytale menace as well as comedy and beauty here. I love this stuff and remember it well from A Necklace of Raindrops, which was one of my favourite books as a child.

Arthur Rackham is one man who seriously understands the power of myth and fable and the darker side of fantasy. Apparently ‘children relished the thrills engendered by his forests of looming frightening trees with grasping roots and his ogres and trolls that were ugly enough to repulse without being too frightening. And they were drawn to his sensuous but chaste fairy maidens. His backgrounds rewarded close inspection, the observant reader discovering images of animated animals or trees.’ Those trees terrified me – I had nightmares about the ones in Snow White.

More recently we have Anthony Browne with echoes of the great Rackham in his murkily atmospheric backgrounds and animated trees; Michael Foreman with luminous colour washes, and Janet Alberg who claimed her intention was ‘to produce William Morris books at Penguin prices.’

There were other illustrators I’d never such as Lois Elhert who worked with scrap materials from her mother’s material collection and father’s workshop, such as lumber, shavings, and nails. They were brighter than craft paper and easier to reposition – she would only stick them down when she felt happy with them.

Kay Neilsen is a Danish illustrator whose style is influenced by her experience in theatrical design, hence her characters often have impossibly long legs and long flowing dresses. Another, Gavin Bishop, is apparently a noted Kiwi illustrator whose take on The House that Jack Built posits European colonisation as the aggressor; the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat etc.

And so we come to the curious phenomenon that is the Flower Fairies. This sub genre of fairytales portraying fairy children dressed as flowers is different in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The Northern hemisphere version (as espoused by Cicely Mary Barker) is elegant and romantic; the Southern hemisphere interpretation features cuter, roly-poly fairies who are more scantily clad, as depicted by Trevor Lloyd, Mary Gibbs, and Avis Acres. I have never heard of these, but would like to know if they are responsible for the mawkish abomination that is Anne Geddes.

Marvellous mural

In my last post from my trip to Hawke's Bay, I thought I would share these photos with you of a mural by the esplanade.

Gisborne boasts quite a few murals, usually with a historic focus and featuring steam trains, men in overalls and ladies in bonnets. This one is quite different, as you can see.

There are individual tiles painted with children's faces. These are fantastic! They were painted by the children of a local school and there are some pretty weird looking pupils if we assume that these are self-portraits. Some are blue or yellow with crazy teeth and wild hair.

It reminds me of a recording I have of Joyce Grenfell 'doing' George, Don't Do That'.


"And this is my friend Caroline, and Caroline is painting such a lovely red picture, aren't you, Caroline? I wonder what it is? Perhaps it's a lovely sunset, is it? Or a big red orange? It's a picture of Mummy! For a moment I thought it was a big red orange, but now you tell me, I can see it is a picture of Mummy. Aren't you going to give her any nose? No nose. It's so interesting the way they see things..."

I always wondered what it was that the irrepressible George was doing. I assumed he was picking his nose, but I have heard other suggestions that are generally far less pleasant.

If anyone has any (not obscene - there is a good taste blocker on this site) suggestions as to what George is up to, please share them.

I'd also be keen to know if anyone has any further information on this mural. Perhaps you know someone who provided one of the paintings - perhaps you are someone who provided one of the paintings. I'd love to hear from you.

As I was playing with the camera settings, I'll leave you with a final picture of the mural in a swirl.

Hidden Treasures

The Simple to Sumptuous exhibition at the National Library Gallery had a plethora of books spanning the disciplines of art, literature, communications, economics and sociology. This collection of books ranges from the elaborate to the simple. Once again it inspired me to poetry as I wondered would you judge a book by its cover; well, would you?


There is a book written on Shackleton's expedition to Antrarctica, bound in 1908 in wooden boards from packing cases of whatever came to hand - in this case it was a crate of beans. It is hardly a glamorous binding for the writings about and drawings of one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet.


Another is a work by Dante Gabrielle Rossetti - his ballads and sonnets are bound with a cover from 1881. The beige silk cloth with mesh of gold thread is oversewn with flowers and leaves in imitation of the Rossetti designed cover of the standard edition. When Rossetti's wife died from overuse of laudanum, he buried the poems he had been working on in her coffin.


Years later he tried to recall them, but found he couldn't - his own mind was addled with chloral hydrate by now - and so the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, to which he belonged, encouraged him to dig them up and publish them: love sonnets from beyond the grave.

Tiny devotional books of the Tudor and Stuart period with canvas bindings, were embroidered with gold and silver thread, and bound with a common lower board so the volumes are upside down to each other, facing opposite directions. They are fragile now due to overuse and are practically falling apart - they have become dilapidated or looted for their thread.

In a glut of excess, the bookbinders Sangorski and Sutcliffe of London were famous for their use of coloured leathers, gold and semi-precious stones. They created The Great Omar, which was a version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It took two years of continuous work to make and featured 1,500 separate pieces of leather, 1,050 jewels and heavy gold tooling.

It was lost on the sinking of the Titanic. A copy was made, but this was destroyed in World War II during the Blitz. With no disrespect to the great Omar Khayyam and his fantastic living in the moment philosophy ('A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou'), the story of this cover may be as great as its contents and demands to be told.

Hidden Treasures

1.

What’s in the box?
Tales of adventure; feats of heroism;
Sheaves of botanical images
And mystical wisps of ethereal light
From the ends of the earth

Crates of beans
Natural fibre to fuel expeditions
At the end of an era
And feed the soul with half-told truths
Now frozen in time.

2.

Tenderly traced in threads of gold
Flowers and leaves burst from beige silk
The mesh shot with dreams made flesh
Through post-coital lovers and chloral hydrate.

Tendrils weaving through clods of earth
Buried with flowing tresses.
The rotting notebook of a painter poet;
Renaissance through Brotherhood.

3.

Miniature acts of devotion for Tudors and Stuarts
Where Transubstantiation means death
In the wrong hands.

Thumb-worn and dog-eared; His Masters Voice is
Closeted in confessional, dancing dos-a-dos,
Sleeping head to toe.

Pillaged for their precious thread; dilapidated and
Abandoned to the ravages of times
Fragile as faith.

4.

Jewels and stones may break my bones
But words will live forever.
Beneath the waves or blitzed cities
Rumours of hidden treasure.

Forget the gold, coloured leather,
Years of continuous strife;
Just be happy for this moment,
For this moment is your life.

Enclosure

Continuing the theme of the last post about the Simple to Sumptuous exhibition, I've been writing more poems.

This one was inspired by the fine examples of leather-bounds volumes. Leather was the most popular binding until the nineteenth century with domestic farm animals being used for every purpose available. The leather was treated with salt to produce a creamy white colour, very popular in Germany, whereas vellum was treated with lime.

The raised bands are due to the thick leather being sewn, and the corner pieces and raised studs are to protect the leather from rough surfaces. In many instances the dyed leather with a simple border framing the open space caused the primary ornament to become the natural grain and texture of the leather.

All of this got me thinking about the Enclosure Acts between 1750 and 1860, during which 21% of common land in England was enclosed by the landowners. Farmers moved to urban areas and began taking labouring jobs for wages. Marxist economists believe that this was the beginning of the proletariat and capitalist social relations.

Which naturally led me to think about George Orwell and his famous last lines of Animal Farm; "The creatures outside looked from pig to man and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." And so I wrote the following:

Enclosure

Domestic farm animals:
Calf; pig; sheep –
Thoroughly used for meat to eat
And hide to hide
The words of wisdom
Or otherwise
Contained within.

Treated with salt
To preserve and render
Tough but tender,
The creamy white hue is
Popular for palimpsests,
Kept from rough surfaces
By raised bands and studs.

Natural grain and texture
Is the primary ornament.
The simple border encloses
An open space,
Valuable to owners of
Domestic farm animals
Without the common

Drifting to town from forbidden acres
The country folk become
The man on the street, while
Landowners make laws with learning.
Noses in books they are
Hard to tell apart;
Clean and clever animals.

Simple to Sumptuous: Clasp

A couple of months ago I went to an exhibition at the National Library gallery called Simple to Sumptuous, which was a collection of book bindings from the Alexander Turnbull Library, ranging from 1400 to the present.

The function of a bookbinding is simply to hold the book together; to protect the pages from wear and tear. They are basic but practical – things of great beauty and collectors’ items in their own right. This exhibition featured many examples from around the world, including Europe, Japan and Antarctica.

The books are just gorgeous, and even the language used to describe them is rich and evocative: ‘decorative end leaves and pastedown on cream watered silk with gold-tooled turn-ins; red goatskin gold tooled and on-lain in black; endleaves of pale blue watered silk; velvet lined oak case’. It was inspiring enough to move me to poetry.

The first verse relates to the clasps and straps to keep the wood from warping and the vellum pages flat. The strap sewn to the top cover indicates that the book comes from Germany or the Low Countries; if sewn to the bottom cover it originates from England or France.

To secure knowledge, many books were kept in chained libraries with a chain passing through the clasp; there is an example of one of these clasps harbouring a miniature in a book covered in brown goatskin, edged in brass with gilt text edges.

Clasp

Knowledge is power
But a little is dangerous
So it must be rationed.
There are checks and balances;
Keys and locks

Surround her face
In a miniature oval,
Clasping the spine tightly.
Her smile is serene as she
Guards her secrets.

Beneath layers of glass
Protected and displayed
Her image is eternal;
Impossible to analyse as a
Thought in words.

Postcard from Gisborne

It was a glorious morning in Gisborne when I went for a wander around the streets and found a really great cafe for breakfast. Next to a secondhand bookshop, Cafe Ruba is fantastic - great coffee and an excellent bagel served with smoked salmon scrambled eggs.

A small vase of fragrant flowers (possibly jasmine; I'm not very good with my flora) and a bottle of water appeared on the table as if by magic.

Folk greet the morning here, discussing the world on the chairs outside. Boys in school uniform sit at a large table well-stocked with glossy magazines and sip coffee with a nonchalance that belies their years.

Baking tempts from behind the glass cabinets. The service is friendly, smiling, welcoming, prompt and adroit. I was impressed.

Gisborne is home to one of the largest carved meeting houses in New Zealand. Te Poho-O-Rawiri Marae is a beautiful building.

It is surrounded by beautiful green hills, bush and countryside. The red and white wooden embellishments to the building stand out in a powerful manner. The marae has hosted many people and many matters have been discussed here. Another great place for a meeting.

Close to the marae sits a Presbyterian church - at least I assume it is Presyterian due to the blue and white colouring. I don't know how long either of these buildings have been here or how well they coexist, but I like to think of them sitting side by side with the guardians or gods of each watching over their people and welcoming in all those who wish to enter.