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Child on the Cusp of Post-Modernism
My childhood was immersed,
Drowning in Modernism.
My parent’s formative art practice
Absolutely at the cutting edge
The industrial heart
The break through Bauhaus
1950’s Leeds College of Art
Received a tornado
Finally the Dessau school
Made its way to the
industrial
Heart of the North.
Harry Thubron
brought his
on the back of beer
mats and cigarette boxes in the Cobourg Tavern
His vision and skills
communicated
To the ready ears of
the
Students and
teaching staff
At the College.
My mother agog
with the new System,
the Basic Programme.
Ann was taught by
Miss Noble of the
Old school as was
thought.
Taught in the Art
Deco style
My mother was ready
to move
Design in a new
direction
Modernism arrived in
with the Bauhaus
philosophy and its
inspiration brought
new thoughts.
As for me myself and
I
I was born
On the cusp of a
decade
On the cusp of 2
houses
On the cusp of an
hour
Crazy balancing act
A foot in both camps
always
But never on the
fence
Seeing both sides of
every story
And every history
But this is my
herstory
This is the legend
of me
This is the
narrative of my life
This is the tapestry
woven
Row by row
Slowly – so slowly
but surely
The pattern is
everything
It is not completed
It is not time to
cut my life
From the loom.
The pattern is
emerging in bloom
And my life expands
and contracts
In shades and hues
of ever
Changing fortune
showing a maze
In which the centre
is not always achieved
Only to S-bend into
the
Next complexity.
Back circling upwards
Passing the same
point
But with a slightly
different angle
To make
Modernism
This Behemoth begun
in the 1890s
As with my life
I was born on the
cusp of
Modernism changing
to Post-Modernism.
Brought up in a
household
Enthralled to the
ethos of Modernism
Surrounded by
paintings, engravings and jewellery
Of Modernism
The geometries, the
flat planes of flatter colour
In neutral prismatic
greys and earth tone
Cubism has done its
work
And in the minds of
young Northern
Students the palette
and forms of
The continental milieu,
The expressionist
paradigm
The Futurists,
Dadaist, industrialist
Manifestos of Europe
Rang the same bells
in the
Opened minds of art
students
Surrounded by mills
and mines
It makes sense
Back turned firmly
against WWII
Rejection of the
values of the past
Idealist Marxist cant
Takes hold in art
college leftism
In Bohemian minds
Wanting freedom from
the past
The Orphist blaze of
the electric lantern
The Surrealists
slide into blissful unconscious
Pulling out taboo
subjects of
Sexuality, emotion,
dream state trance.
How this tidal wave
of Modernism
Ever reached the far
flung shore
Of our front door
And seeped into colour
schemes
Collections and
design work.
My spirit was
awakened amidst Modernism
My first objects to
touch
Were modernist
sculptures
I was consumed in my
womb house
With Modernism so it
became my touch-stone
So no other art
movements mattered
As much as Modernism
So alternative
feelings for new ways
Were rejected for a
long time.
Post-Modernism is
the thing of
My formative college
days
Without taking too
much notice of it
As if glancing
obliquely at it
It was going on
while I watched
From the bushes to
see if it was safe
Post-Modernism isn’t
safe
It is unstable
It asks questions
It is always changing
It rejects
It is against
It poses danger to
body and soul
If misunderstood
If taken too
literally
It is chaos and must
be handled wisely,
But strangely it too
has had its day,
given way to
Speculative
Realism,
the cusp is reset
and just at the
tipping point between one and the other
I sit again, ready
for the ride.
Image - Cobourg Tavern 1965, Leeds
(Leodis Archive Leeds City Council)
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