In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

 

Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart

What a curious film. Hollywood movies, at least those of the 1950s, were not expected to end without any resolution. In this one, the hero, Dixon Steele, played by Humphrey Bogart, is a screenwriter with a propensity to violence. He is implicated in a murder, which he did not commit, but the suspicion is enough to make him lose his cool at any moment. He falls in love with a neighbour, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), but her love isn’t enough. At the end of the film, he is cleared of the murder … but walks away, into the night.

Why would Bogart make such a film? Even more astonishing, the film was made by his own production company, so he couldn’t claim he accepted an inferior part. The part was written for him. 

My suggestion is that Bogart recognized the new dimension in his acting role, a dimension that is the reason why we watch his films today. As a private detective, Bogart (whether Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, or Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep), played a loner who nonetheless remained principled. He represented, for the audience, a point of integrity in a world full of evil and corruption. Bogart must have felt that this role suited him, and if David Thompson is to be believed, he was far more successful in these roles than he was as an out-and-out villain (with more than 28 films as the baddie). 

So, to Bogart’s credit, he was one of a handful of actors who could play good or evil roles. Cary Grant, for all his accomplishments, was a hopeless villain (and I don’t imagine Charlie Chapin would have made a convincing villain either). In this role, as Dixon Steel, he retains his integrity and principles, but he is so adamant about not following compassion that he appears as a oddball, a misanthrope, as well as a misogynist. In other words, he attempts to carry the private eye role into another area. I assume Bogart’s intention was that we, the viewers, admire Dixon Steele, but we recognize he is difficult to deal with (and presumably nowadays would regard him as a classic case of PTSD). Implicated in a murder, Steele talks to the police captain with an incredible insouciance, comparing himself to the dead woman’s boyfriend, the other suspect: 

Dixon Steele: It was his story against mine, but of course, I told my story better.

Of course, Dick Steele is also a misogynist, but that is what I would expect of a film made in 1950. This is part of the baggage of the time, and not worth complaining about now. Unfortunately, the film shows its age by the abrupt about-turn in Gloria Grahame’s character. For the first couple of scenes, where she and Bogart are flirting, there is a magic in her dialogue and character that is only rivalled by the best screwball comedies. Her lines are assertive and adventurous, but not simply subservient:

Dixon Steele: How can anyone like a face like this? Look at it...

[leans in for a kiss]

Laurel Gray: I said I liked it - I didn't say I wanted to kiss it.

Dixon Steele is the man of truth. He is asked to write a screenplay based on a book he knows h  isn’t going to like, gets a clerk to read the book for him and retell it to him, and then refuses to congratulate himself when the director likes the resulting script. Presumably acceptance of the script means success, income, and reassurance: but not for Dixon Steele, the man of principle, in the middle of Hollywood (the last place you would expect to stick to your principles).

So at the end, when Bogart walks out on the girlfriend, on happiness, on being settled, we respect him, yet we hate him. He is a monster, let’s face it; it would probably be the same if the private detective ever married any of his lady friends. But in the detective films, the question never arises. Part of writing a successful film script is not to include the uncomfortable moments: it kills the fantasy. Elliott Gould, at the end of The Long Goodbye (1974), doesn’t marry anyone either, but we don’t mind or care. Perhaps we feel instinctively that Gould would never strike anyone in uncontrollable anger, while Dixon Steele looks to be perfectly capable of unwarranted violence at any moment. It makes for uncomfortable viewing. 

Network: the impossibility of avoiding light entertainment

 

For much of its two-hour duration, Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) was very different to usual Hollywood fare. It was genuinely engaged with contemporary society. The opening was riveting, with TV anchor Howard Beale announcing he intends to commit suicide on air. What makes the scene remarkable is that although we are in the control room while the live announcement is taking place, none of the executives notice what is being said. The truth is that they aren’t really bothered about what he is saying. That irony sets the scene for a remarkable, if not quite unique, movie. Once they are told about Beale’s rantings, instead of dismissing him, the executives use him to attempt to improve their ratings. 

There is a tradition of biting satire directed at television in Hollywood, not surprisingly, and other sharply satirical treatments of the media include Sweet Smell of Success (1956). But this film is, for the most part, a sharper satire than most. I say for the most part, because while Howard Beale (a remarkable portrait by Peter Finch) goes steadily mad, the film turns its attention to the most unlikely of love affairs, in the most hackneyed Hollywood style. Max Schumacher, head of the news division, has a torrid affair with another senior executive, Diana Christensen (who looks twenty years younger). The affair is highly unlikely. Christensen is a woman on the make, who would stop at nothing to reach the top  - so why should she bother with a recently sacked veteran who has no continuing influence in the organisation? I couldn’t help thinking that the bitterest irony was her denunciation of news bulletins as just the same as the entertainment shows (“I watched your 6 o’clock news today; it’s straight tabloid.”). That denunciation loses much of its power in a movie that sags alarmingly in the middle to depict the same kind of love affair we had been watching for years: an old man and a young woman, who suddenly seems to lose all her self-possession in the arms of a man who could almost be her father. For several minutes, the lovers, now ex-lovers, denounce each other with grand statements from the pen of Paddy Chayefsky that sound just like every other sitcom on TV. The trick is to create an impressive-sounding statement with an air of finality, which is then followed by an equally impressive-sounding statement, and so on. This is not dialogue, it’s successive one-liners, and it sounds dreadfully stilted. For example: 

Max Schumacher: I’m the man you presumably love. I’m a part of your life. I live here. I’m real. You can’t switch to another station.

Diana Christensen: I was married for four years, and pretended to be happy; and I had six years of analysis, and pretended to be sane.

These remarks are not really part of a conversation. They are set pieces, as shallow as the TV attitudes condemned by the rest of the film. They don’t belong here (see, I’m learning to use the style myself). Network would be an even greater achievement if it had managed not to go soft in the middle.

The Museum formerly known as the Cambridgeshire Folk Museum

 

The collection of traditional Fen objects

Oxford and Cambridge have a similar problem. The university tends to dominate much of the activity and tourism in the city, with the result that the local museum has always suffered. By “local” I mean a museum dedicated to the town rather than to the university. You can appreciate their problems, since visitors to Oxford and Cambridge usually come for the university, however intangible that institution might be (I remember visitors to Oxford asking me where the university was, because you could be in the middle of Oxford and not notice it). 

The Museum of Cambridge has more problems than that of Oxford. First, it has changed its title, if not its remit. It was founded as the Cambridge and County Folk Museum in 1936. At some point in the last few years it changed its name to the present Museum of Cambridge. This is a misnomer, because it covers Cambridgeshire as well as Cambridge. 

The Museum is situated in an historic inn, which partly dates back to the 16th century. However, nobody would claim the building is highly significant. The collection, of around 30,000 objects, isn’t highly significant either. When I visited the Museum last weekend, I didn’t see one object that would I would describe as unmissable. 

The Museum has a series of small rooms, covering a smattering of subjects from Cambridge and the county. One room is devoted to brewing. One room contains objects relating to the Fens. One room has old domestic utensils. In other words, it is similar to several other museums within a 75-mile radius. 

The "I used to have one of those in my house" type of collection

The problem with a museum that has nothing distinctive is that there is no real reason for visiting it. A few years ago, the Museum was in the headlines because it was threatened with closure, something that seems to have been averted by appointing new trustees. Yet for me the fundamental questions remain. Both times I’ve visited the Museum I would be hard pressed to say there was anything in it worth saving. What is the scope of the Museum? it doesn’t really attempt to cover the history of anything. There are some scraps from Cambridge history, but no attempt at explanation or interpretation. There are even some old oars, from Cambridge college rowing teams; oars on the walls represent a low point for the individual colleges, and what they are doing in a museum which covers everything outside the university is beyond my imagination. Of all the things to collect and display, university memorabilia should be low on the agenda.

I was fortunate to be shown round the Museum by the chair of the trustees, Roger Lilley. His enthusiasm and knowledge was infectious, and he mentioned the impressive online project Connecting Cambridge, which aims to collect oral histories at a very local level.

But despite Roger’s enthusiasm, my doubts about the museum remain. In a city full of attractions like Cambridge, a collection needs to have a distinct identity. I can find out about the Fens from Wisbech, Ely, and King’s Lynn museums. I can find old domestic appliances in any number of old houses and collections. There is no compelling reason to visit this museum: it lacks a big idea. Even Mildenhall Museum, which has none of the Mildenhall Treasure on show (all the originals are in the British Museum), still makes an attempt to explain why Mildenhall is famous by the use of replicas and information boards. There are very few information boards here.

The Museum could, like the Pitt Rivers in Oxford, emphasise its folk connections. There are a (very) few objects linked to witchcraft and folklore. The Museum could try to show the history of Cambridge in a meaningful way, with references to prominent local employers such as Pye, ARM, Sinclair, and Chivers (of Histon). The Museum could attempt the difficult feat of a collection relating to Cambridgeshire, which covers both rolling chalk scenery (in the south) and the Fens (in the north): two very different habitats and histories. The University-managed Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology currently has an excellent exhibition relating to the archaeology of Cambridgeshire.

Saddest of all, there is no longer a café. The first time I visited, there was a very sweet café with old cups and saucers, run by lovely old dears. This time, the café was firmly closed. 

Thousands of people must walk past the Museum every day on their way around Cambridge, yet I can’t in all honesty recommend that they stop for a visit to the institution still known to most locals as the Folk Museum. Better to go to a collection with a single theme, such as the David Parr House. My (admittedly personal) dream would be a museum dedicated to the history and growth of the town of Cambridge. Not from the point of view of one college, but explaining how the Roman settlement was located here, why the town missed out on the industrial growth that Oxford experienced in the 20th century, but how Cambridge has now become a powerhouse of biomedical research and IT start-ups. That is a remarkable story: from Sinclair Research, to the BBC Micro, to the mighty ARM. That, for me, would be a distinctive theme for a museum.  

North by Northwest (1959)

 

North by Northwest (1959) is regularly included as one of the great films of Alfred Hitchcock. Given the detailed critical appraisal handed to Vertigo and Rear Window, I expected something far more dark than this. Instead, I noticed the jokes (including the hospital patient whose room Grant accidentally enters, and who immediately cries out "Don't go!") 

My immediate motivation for watching this film (I had seen it before, but so long ago that I had forgotten it) was to explore the role of Cary Grant. David Thompson recently reviewed two biographies of Grant, and how both of them attempted to get to the bottom of Grant’s magic. I read with fascination about how Grant’s mother was incarcerated in an asylum for over 20 years, with what horrific effect for him I can hardly imagine. I then watched a documentary, Becoming Cary Grant, by Mark Kidel, which revealed some more interesting facts – but at the same time clothed this documentary in an annoying cod-psychoanalytic tone that was more simplistic than Hollwood in the 40s and 50s, suggesting that LSD gave Grant some insight he had been lacking, and had several shots of a stand-in playing Grant on the couch with his analyst. 

At this point, I thought, let’s go back to Grant himself. Let’s see again one of his  quintessential performances. North by Northwest  is seen as one of Grant’s best performances. After watching the film, read the relevant section of Hitchcock by Truffaut, Thompson on North by Northwest, as well as Robin Wood  (Hitchcock’s Films, 1965).  Armed with all this background, what did I make of it?

This is indeed, as Thompson claims, more in the tradition of the Hollywood screwball comedy than a thriller. Just as Jacques Lourcelles in the Laffont Encyclopedia of Cinema states, the film is a masterclass in presenting life-threatening danger right alongside humour, much of it self-deprecating, constantly setting up suspense and then piercing it with humour, often suggesting that Grant is not the hero he would like to be. 

2.      Wood compares North by Northwest with Goldfinger, and claims that NBN is a greater film because of its moral stance. That sounds like someone who attended lectures by Leavis (as Wood did), but I don’t think it is a valid distinction between the figure of James Bond and Roger O. Thornhill (the character played by Grant). James Bond films never include a role for James Bond’s mother. If there is a moral progress in this film, you could say it is moral progress shared by many other knockabout comedies – and the progress is in fact questionable (see below).

3.      For me, on seeing the film a second time, the least effective scenes were the most famous: the attack by a crop-dusting plane, and the final sequence on Mount Rushmore. Why were these scenes so ineffective? Partly because Grant, like Bond, cannot die. His persona does not include dying. But perhaps more fundamentally, these are the only two scences in the film where the humour, so well linked by Hitchcock, is less apparent. For a moment, Hitchcock concentrates on the action, and pure action is not his strongpoint.

4.      Nor is heroic action Grant’s strongpoint. Grant is great at one-liners, looks wonderful in a suit, but starts to lose his charisma when in a situation of true jeopardy. Insecurity, yes, self-deprecation, yes, but expressing fear, or looking convincing in a stage fight is not really what he does.

5.      In Wood’s view, Grant through the film moves towards a “proper” relationship with women: from being married twice (he states they both divorced him) to accepting a “mature” love affair. The problem with this view is that Eva Marie Saint (Eve Kendall) represents so many conflicting viewpoints at the same time in the film. She is the sexy, inviting woman on the train; the cold and calculating temptress who will spend the night with Grant just so she can send him to a certain death in the interest of her mission; but the implications of these attitudes leave the scriptwriter with too many loose ends. You can’t commit your life to someone who sent you to your death a couple of scenes ago.

There are also questions about Eve Kendall’s morality. How did she become the mistress of a spy? This predates her recruitment by the US authorities, so presumably it was a conscious decision, but she describes it flippantly as

“I had a spare evening, so I decided to fall in love”? Such talk worked when flirting with Grant, but makes her judgement rather suspect when she falls for one of the most evil people on the planet. With such knowledge, could Grant ever really be happy? Would he not suspect her to the end of his days?

6.      And what about Leo Carroll, usually the figure of authority in so many English films, stating in his very appearance that he is willing to let Grant go to his death in the interest of security? Why, as Grant points out, is he willing to prostitute Eve Kendall for the same end? Doesn’t this suggest a lack of morality, rather than a moral focus?

7.       And why doesn’t anyone notice that Martin Landau is depicted as the utterly villainous homosexual, who knows things because of his “womanly intuition”? Such a line would be excised from any film made today.

No, this film does not have moral gravity, at least, no more than many screwball comedies. The “secrets” are so vague we are never told what they are. The villains are stagy. No, for me, NBN remains memorable as (a) the US remake of The 39 Steps, and none the worse for that.  I would say the achievement of the film is Grant moving from shallow and irresponsible (and dishonest) to becoming responsible, but without losing his self-deprecating humour. He is the man you most want to go to bed with – and there would be plenty of laughs along the way.  

 One final comment in its favour: Grant made this film when he was 55? Yet Hitchcock managed the great feat of making Grant look at least ten years younger, and still sexually alluring. A few years later, in Charade (1963), he looked like an OAP in the wrong place alongside a young heroine. Here, he succeeds brilliantly. Perhaps that is the mark of a great director: he maintained the image of Grant as the laid-back, wise-cracking man we would all like to be (even if we are all held back, like Thornhill, by our mothers).

A visit to the Burrell Collection, Glasgow

 

Glasgow certainly needs trophy buildings. After the glories of the late 19th and early 20th century, when the University and commercial centre competed to create the most dramatic and ostentatious constructions, the next seventy-five years seemed to produce much less of note. When Glasgow finally found a home for The Burrell Collection, ignoring Burrell’s stipulation that it should be housed many miles from Glasgow because of the polluted city air, they did the right thing and selected by competition a very grand building, not lacking at all in self-confidence. The architects were Barry Gasson, John Meunier, and Brit Andresen, who seem to have a remarkably low profile - I haven’t heard of any other notable buildings by them. The project was an architect’s dream. It was one of those rare opportunities that architects have a huge budget and a brief to create something without reference to any surrounding buildings. The Burrell Collection sits by itself, next to a wood on one side and parkland the other, and the architect was able to do something very dramatic. He chose a gorgeous pink stone, which reminds me of Philip Johnson’s choice of stone for the Bielefeld Art Gallery in Germany. 

The building was completed in 1983, and extended and refurbished in 2022. It’s astonishing that a year later, the building looks entirely new, with next to no sign of wear, and no indication of what was added or changed in the refurbishment. What struck me when walking around the museum were the vistas, with stunning corridors in two directions, and a lovely wood close to the galleries. 

At the time, the spaces were so breath-taking that the collection almost took a back seat. Thinking about it a couple of weeks later, that impression seems more and more a summary of my visit: I think the building was the most impressive experience from the museum. Trying to make sense of Burrell’s collecting policy escapes me. After a while walking from room to room, the amassing of objects with seemingly little coherence becomes tiring. Yet the building seems to exert a powerful effect on the visitor; it made me more contemplative, the chairs looked inviting, and the space seemed somehow special. 

We visited on a summer Sunday, when the museum, park and café were full. Clearly, this was a popular outing for people in Glasgow. In response, the museum staff had certainly worked hard to try to make the collection accessible. So hard, in fact, that the usual principles of museums had been forgotten. To be specific, some of the objects lacked a caption. You could buy a guide at the desk, but that wouldn’t necessarily tell you what you were looking at. For me, it is a basic and necessary part of the museum experience to label what you are looking at (unless there is good reason not to). 

The rooms with partial captions were the very rooms that attempted to recreate the Burrell’s living spaces. But these rooms didn’t for me recreate the Burrell home. They were too close to being a gallery – and yet, at the same time, incompletely captioned. Items out of context. From contemporary photographs, it looks like Burrell and his wife were surrounded by artefacts of different periods and styles. Here, for example, is an angel with organ:

According to the caption, “Burrell displayed this angel, one of a pair, in his grand dining room”. I couldn’t imagine anything more awkward to explain to visitors for dinner. At least the Pierre Loti house in  Rochefort is so crazily inauthentic that the tastelessness becomes interesting. Burrell, in contrast, gives me the impression of a collector’s dead hand, removing the context and hence the ideas and thinking behind the objects when they were created, and leaving them in a collection that resembles in many respects a junk shop.   

When we read the captions that were present, they were frequently dreadful. One reason is simply Burrell’s eclecticsm (to put it as politely as I can)> Burrell appears to have been a typical 19th-century collector for whom the amassing of objects was perhaps more importance than understanding their context. No attempt has been made to add that context, so the result is that many objects look torn from their surroundings in the crassest way. Here is a fragment of a Roman mosaic:

The caption simply states when Burrell bought it (1954), and that it was made in Italy. Such an object is a curator’s nightmare. Are there other depictions of animals in Roman mosaics? Are there any comparable pieces in other collections? We don’t know. Even with this comparatively late addition to the collection, many years have passed since the bequest, and the museum staff should have had time to say something meaningful about the objects. Too many captions reveal a lack of attribution: “possibly France”, for example.

Here is an example, a door. What does the caption tell us?

 

Portal

About 1175-1200

Probably made in Northern England or Scotland

This grand doorway was probably once part of the entrance to an important building. The are lots of different types of fancy carving on the stonework.

 

Is that all that can be said about this door? The surrounding objects have no connection with the door. Most visitors will probably barely notice they are walking through a wonderful piece of carving. Yet such a notable door must have a provenance, and could be tracked down. To say it was “probably” part of an important building is ludicrous. Any building with a door like this would be important.

 

Dreary political correctness

I could give many examples of crass captioning. Many of them are an attempt by the museum staff to drag the collections into some kind of topical relevance. This attempt sometimes fails woefully as the images seem frequently at odds with the kind of impression the staff want to give the visitors.

 

Let’s face it, a sculpture celebrating the vocation of a nun, and created after the Reformation, is rather challenging to present to a 21st-century family audience. Here is the museum’s attempt: 

St Walburga of Eichstätt with nuns

about 1600-25

As nuns, we spend our days in prayer and helping those in need. Joining our home, the convent can also bring new opportunities not often given to other women. You can learn to read, write and help the sick. You could become a respected abbess – looking after your fellow nuns and running the convent.

Well, the sculpture to me looks like a conventional image of collective piety. Piety may not be very fashionable today, but that is what the work of art celebrates. It doesn’t excite me very much, but I can’t ignore the theme. I might mention the colouring, and the lively gestures of the remaining limbs, which gives the piece a memorable animation. I hadn’t thought to examine becoming an abbess as a career choice for the medieval woman.

In fact, the caption tries its best to ignore what the piece is about. Where do I start with this caption? Are the nuns “we” or “you”? How can a convent join a home (“Joining our home, the convent can bring opportunities”)? St Walburga, or Walpurga, according to Wikipedia, is famous as one of the earliest women authors  - she wrote the life of her brother, something not mentioned here. But she also spent 26 years in a convent in Wimborne, most probably making lace – not, perhaps, the female vocation the museum staff would want to promote.

To be fair to Burrell, he did collect some work by contemporaries. But for every locally produced work, there seem to be several miscellaneous items from the ragbag of art history. Even when he selects a contemporary work, I’m not always convinced by his taste. For example, I learn that A Mallard Rising (1908) was one of his favourite paintings. Although he failed to buy it, the Burrell Trustees finally acquired it in 2022. It might be a nice gesture to Mr Burrell, but it’s a lousy painting. There seems to be a collective attempt by the museum not to question the founder’s taste. Even the descriptions of the servants, in the recreated living room, describe an unlikely utopia where everyone, servants and masters, lived in peaceful harmony.

So that’s my reading of the Burrell Collection. It might seem outrageous to condemn the collection, but I don’t feel the way it is presented has done it any favours. The best exhibit is the building itself; after all, it’s the only item in the collection that doesn’t feel as though it has been torn from its context and lost its meaning. The building itself is fulfilling its original function, to inspire and  excite the visitor, and it achieves that magnificently. It is one of those buildings where you walk around viewing vista after vista, leaving you with a heightened appetite for fine visual experiences.

To be honest, this view would look better without that old door in the way

The secret of Giorgio Morandi

 

Morandi, Still Life, 1948 

An exhibition at the Estorick Collection comprised some 50 paintings and etchings by Giorgio Morandi, all from one collection, that of Luigi Magnani. My response to these works was instinctive rather than rational. Before examining the works in detail, I experienced a feeling of calm, of concentration on an everyday object, of turning one’s back on the modern world, since Morandi lived and worked through two world wars, without any sign in his art of what was happening around him. Still-life and flower painting remain today some of the most common themes of art. Many artists, like Morandi, reached a successful theme and then painted many variations on that theme. Would I have had the same response from looking at the work of any other still life and flower painter? Clearly not. What is it that is exceptional about Morandi? Is it that the viewer’s imagination is triggered by the very simplicity, even banality, of the themes?

Morandi’s work is so concentrated around a small number of subjects, perhaps one way to appraise it is to see if there are any exceptions. He painted one self-portrait, which was very competent, and one work that appears to me a  failure, apparently the only work that Morandi was ever commissioned to paint. Asked to depict some musical instruments, he apparently changed the instruments he was asked to paint, but still produced a very indifferent work.  Why? Because the relationship between the objects seems non-existent, and because the objects lacked the sense of three-dimensional shape provided by bottles. 

What did he paint? Possibly the most restricted range of subjects of any 20th-century artist. All he painted (and did prints of) was landscapes, still lifes, and flowers – and there are very few paintings of flowers. There seems little evidence of Morandi talking about art in grand or theoretical terms. His letters to Luigi Magnani seem to be exclusively preoccupied with practical matters. He lived at home with his three sisters, collecting them from mass every Sunday morning (although he didn’t attend mass himself).

Morandi mixed his own paints, and stretched his own canvases. His preferred format was almost square. He would adjust the objects he was painting if they did not provide the shape or colour he was looking for, so clearly his goal was not the exact depiction of what was in front of him; his painting is not realistic, even though every one of his paintings appears representational. He never painted a single object by itself, always multiple objects next to, in front of or behind each other.

Morandi, Still Life, 1936

Are these works of stillness? There doesn’t appear to be much struggle going on from his letters, nor much that critics have been able to identify. Nonetheless, there is something going on with these pictures. Morandi himself stated: “a painting should tell us about the images and emotions that the visible world ignites in us [the painters].” There is certainly something powerful being expressed, which, if it is not the objects themselves, is the relation between the objects. His works are usually signed, in a clearly visible way, so they are clearly a personal statement.

What surprised me on looking at the works in detail is their rough-and-ready execution. There is no attempt to get the verticals straight, or the handles of the jugs precise, or the perspective exact. In several pictures, the background appears to extend impossibly into and over the space occupied by an object. Sometimes the objects have weight, and are arranged as if in a photograph, but in others, the objects are off-centre, not arranged in a very realistic way, and the background is almost lacking in any perspective. Yet the works have a powerful impact, as if these objects in themselves have a vital significance. Remarkably, several etchings of still lifes have the same quality, even though the etchings appear to be more conventional – following rules of perspective and a more orthodox cross-hatching to express distance and proportion. In one or two of the landscapes, which are usually etchings, Morandi achieves the same arresting effect, forcing you to look at a view that in itself is not distinctive, until you notice the relationship between the buildings. There is one etching with a blank white wall on the right of the image – powerful because left blank. Is this just a standard etching technique or is this Morandi’s distinctiveness revealed again?

Morandi, Landscape (Chiesanuova) 1924

Critics suggest a relationship between Morandi and Cézanne, but for me, the most similar artist to Morandi was Chardin, who would paint some simple objects against a matt background with the utmost respect, and almost a feeling of reverence for them. As with Chardin’s still lifes, Morandi’s paintings are not ostentatious, drawing attention to the execution; in fact, their details are somewhat sketchy. Instead, they capture your attention by the sheer force of their execution, the artist’s expression of the idea of a bottle, a jug, some fruit, next to other, similar objects. In the end, as a viewer you start to reach for grand ways to describe such small-scale works.

Identifying trees: no aliens here

 

London plane trees in Berkeley Square (image by Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0  (Wikipedia) 

I attended a course on tree identification at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens. The course was exceptional: it provided everything I could wish. I am a perpetual amateur when it comes to natural history: I see things, but I always forget what they are called, and all I want from a course on identifying trees is to give me some simple method for working out which tree is which, so even if I have been told the name in the past, I can re-discover it. I am surrounded by people who tell me “that’s a hornbeam”, or “that’s a sycamore”, without telling me how they reached that identification. I want to be able to work out the name for myself.

The tutor, Ros Bennett, produced a simple key to all 52 species of British trees. identifying them via their leaf structure – what could be better? To keep the experts and beginners on a level playing field, she covered up the labels of the trees we were trying to identify, and asked those who knew which tree we were looking at to keep quiet while we tried her key.

For the most part, the identification key worked. This was a major step forward for me; my interest in tree identification means I have bought several identification guides, but never found one that I could use on a regular basis. In an attempt to describe many species, perhaps they provided too many choices. 

Some of the 55 different leaf types described in the Collins Complete Guide to British Trees (2007)

This key, in contrast, worked very well for the limited species described. Like all the best keys, you were only contrasting one or two things at a time.

So, what’s to complain about? Given that the course was only one day, the tutor had to be limited in setting goals, and this course only covered  deciduous trees (although she told us there are only three native species of conifer in the British Isles). In addition,  she revealed that, although she has published her key in a recent book (Tree Spotting, 2022), she was only using one of the keys in that book. She didn’t make any use of the key to differentiating trees via their buds, which is also found in her book. In addition, we noticed that of course there are other simple clues to identifying trees, such as last year’s fruit hanging from the tree.

The final limitation, and the one that intrigues me, was that the course was restricted to “native” trees. She confidently stated there are 52 native species, but immediately relaxed that criterion to say she was including sycamore, which is not native. Yet we would not consider London plane, which is introduced, rather than native.

 Hang on a minute! As a keen amateur taxonomist, I’m always fascinated to discover classification rules that are broken as soon as they are stated. If we are including sycamore, then what exactly is the criterion for tree identification? I realise that we were sitting in the classroom of the Cambridge Botanic Garden, which is full of an incredible variety of trees from all around the world, but we know as well that a botanic garden is not a typical environment. We don’t expect our simple key to cover everything in the Garden, but I would expect it to include sycamore, and I would expect the course to include very common trees that are found in streets and gardens, such as London plane. I was also alarmed by the terms “native” and “alien”. What is going on here? Two days later, I was walking in a London street only to discover it was populated with gingko trees. Not so exotic, then, if they are widely used as street trees.

Consider the flowers in our garden. Cambridge Botanic Garden has a fascinating set of beds containing flowers that were introduced in each century. Many of these flowers are widely grown, and it seems almost irrelevant to try to distinguish which flowers were present at the last ice age and which were not.

The tutor’s definition of “native” corresponded with that in other sources:

It is widely accepted that ‘native’ trees and shrubs are those species that have occurred naturally in Britain since the last Ice Age. The more recent introductions that have established themselves in the wild are referred to as ‘naturalised’ or ‘archeophytes’. [Royal Horticultural Society]

Some other definitions allow to “natural” entry to Britain:

A native plant is either a plant that arrived naturally in Britain and Ireland since the end of the last glaciation (i.e. without the assistance of humans) or one that was already present (i.e. it persisted during the last Ice Age). [Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland]

Other definitions, from outside the UK, are wider:

A plant is considered native if it has occurred naturally in a particular region, ecosystem, or habitat without human introduction. [US National Wildlife Federation] 

Does this matter? It certainly jars when current debates in the UK Parliament are all about controlling the level of migration to the UK. Terms such as “native” have rather nasty connotations for a liberal like me. I would have thought the most appropriate definition of trees I would like to identify is: 

All trees that either were present at the time of the last ice age, or which have become widely established since that date, regardless of how they were introduced. 

I want a definition that covers the trees I am most likely to see occurring in the wild in the UK, as well as the most widely planted trees in streets. Instead of 52 species, that might go up to around 80 (the number included in the Woodland Trust’s “A-Z of British Trees”,or the 114 contained in John Kilbracken’s Easy Way to Tree Recognition (1983, but still in print). That list includes London plane, the Holm oak, and turkey oak. John Kilbracken describes the situation very well: 

With trees it’s very different [compared to birds]. Many species grow wild – by which I mean they are self-sown – but more often they have been planted.

Like it or not, the trees you see around are very frequently the result of human choices, unlike birds, for the most part. I’d like to include therefore a larger list than Bennett’s 52 species – and I’d like to change the title, while I’m about it. It’s no doubt my hyper-sensitivity, but I much prefer the idea of “trees that are common in Britain”, to any other criteria of “nativeness” that seems to me arbitrary and not linked to common knowledge. I’d like to have a more flexible definition of native – and if we applied the definition “present at the last ice age” to humans, we would get into all kinds of difficulty.