30 November 2009

Lina Bryans, modern Australian woman

Gillian Forwood prepared the excellent catalogue, The Babe is Wise: Lina Bryans and her Portraits, the Ian Potter Gallery’s retrospective exhibition in 1995. And she wrote the 2003 book Lina Bryans, Rare Modern 1909-2000, excellent references for this post. So was Modern Australian Women: Paintings and prints 1925-1945, held in the Art Gallery of South Australia in 2000-1.

Jock Marshall, 1945

Lina Hallenstein was born in Hamburg in 1909 then the family moved to Australia. Forwood showed some of the conflicting and complementary parts of Bryan’s unusual life: part of an established Australian Jewish family, yet exposed to Europe’s non Jewish treasures; raised in a privileged, upper middle class family yet friends with impoverished immigrants; growing up in an era of stable Edwardian values, but belonging to the post-WW1 era of experimentation.

I’d loved to have known more about her relationships with her both sides of her well documented family, the Hallensteins and the Benjamins. We know of their connections in Australia and New Zealand, but we have no sense of their influence. Cousin Charles Brasch seemed to be the only relative with something to say about Lina’s career. There was even less information about husband Baynham Bryans, father of her only child. What happened to him? And what happened about the raising of Edward, who boarded at Geelong Grammar?

Portrait of Laurie Thomas, 1950

Bryans art career didn’t involve formal enrolment in art school. She was probably influenced in the early years by Iain MacKinnon, the Scottish watercolour artist. He opened up the world of modern French art to her, and took her to galleries and exhibitions.

Then she met William Jock Frater, the man who had the greatest influence on her career. Frater had studied art in Glasgow, London and Paris, then came to Australia to assist at the modern art school. He was the father of Post-Impressionist, Cezannesque art in Australia. Frater’s modernism liberated his own work from convention and in turn influenced younger artists, above all Bryans.

She worked for some time in his Little Collins St studio, and finally decided to become an artist herself. One of his most famous and beautiful NGV works was the Red Hat 1937, a study of Bryans! Look it up so you picture Bryans as a young, modern woman with an eye for looking sharp. But also to see Frater’s fine use of colour in modelling that so influenced Bryans in her own work. Frater also did a larger and cooler Portrait of Lina Bryans 1940. Excellent portraits by Bryans can be found in Figuration Féminine blog

Artists Adrian Lawlor and his wife Eva Nodrum had lived in Warrandyte, and during the late 1930s were hosts to Bryans, Frater and Alan Summer.

Lina was a risk taker, and not just in her Bohemian life style. Of course all modernists took risks; they may not have found patrons amongst conservative art buyers. But Forwood showed that women artists took even greater risks: travelling overseas, using modernist styles disliked by critics; pursuing career at the expense of family. Even then, Bryans' personal life was marked by upheavals: relationships were hot then cold; she moved around the state; her family was shocked. She was what was called a New Woman, a free spirit. Bryans lived in the city, spent much time with a man not her husband (Frater), socialised with newly arrived immigrants, shocked her parents, and wrote, painted and partied whenever she chose.

Barbara Falk, 1961

These behaviours may have been a problem for an artist whose sole income came from selling art, but Bryans was financially independent. Patronage might have been a problem, considering her status as both an untrained woman artist and as a modernist. Yet she did have patrons! Her canvases were sold to keen buyers, donated to public collections or given to friends.

Lina’s first public success was at the Heidelberg Town Hall in 1937, then Warrandyte and the Herald Exhibition of Outstanding Pictures. And in 1940 she joined the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, exhibiting with them for decades. Women artists worked together, dealing with workplace and family commitments, economic survival and sexism. Here Bryans met Australia’s best women artists: Clara Southern, Ethel Carrick Fox, Dora Serle, Janet Cumbrae-Stewart, Isabel Hunter Tweddle, Ada May Plante.

Then artist Norman Macgeorge and his circle started inviting younger artists to the Heidelberg area to paint. Bryans and her friend Ian Fairweather were pleased to accept. Soon Bryans bought an old hotel, Darebin Bridge House, which became a cultural hub for artists and intellectuals. Like the Reeds at Heide, she played an important nurturing role in Melbourne’s art world.

Bryan’s portrait of Jean Campbell was named after Campbell’s novel, The Babe is Wise. The title was appropriate. Firstly Campbell’s novel studied the responses of a European family who had emigrated to Australia, as the Hallensteins had done. Secondly the portrait was witty, cool and full of female independence. These values were as applicable to Bryans herself as they were to Campbell. Her paintings had flat shapes and strong impressionistic colours.

Prof Jock Marshall, distinguished Australian botanist and writer, became noted as an advocate for environmental and conservation issues. When the war with Japan was over and Jock Marshall had been demobilised, he came to Melbourne. Lina quickly did a very probing portrait of him, still sick from the war in New Guinea but energetic.

Post WW2 Bryans became very busy again. She went back to her beloved portraits, including those of important creative and scientific Australians. She did a wonderful portrait of the philosopher Bruce Benjamin. Queensland Gallery Director, Robert Haines c1955, was another significant but small painting. And there is a good portrait of writer Nettie Palmer 1959 in the National Library. Nettie had been an important literary reviewer before the war, and continued her work as an editor, diarist and woman of letters. The two women admired each other’s work. Barbara Falk was an educationalist who Bryans admired enormously.

My favourite portrait is of Lina's oldtime friend Laurie Thomas, painted in the year he was appointed Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Victoria. Thomas was very grateful to Bryans for introducing him to Daryl Lindsay and for helping him on his art career. Thomas' next position was as Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

The National Library has acquired a Bryans portrait of the Melbourne artist and writer Adrian Lawlor, painted in 1964. This portrait was shown at the Ian Potter Gallery in Melbourne University, as part of an exhibition devoted to the portraits of Lina Bryans. Lawlor was done in the Fauvist style, with strong colours such as red and yellow reflecting the personality of the sitter.

Adrian Lawlor, 1964

To understand her real contribution to Australian cultural life, I have focussed exclusively on Bryans’ 70+ portraits, painted between 1937 and 1974. These portraits of her friends formed an impressive visual record of Melbourne's cultural glitterati. In any case, I did not enjoy her landscapes nearly as much.






27 November 2009

Rudyard Kipling's home in Mumbai

Rudyard Kipling’s birthplace is being converted into a museum. The 2-storey timber and stone cottage was built before his birth in Dec 1865. Located in the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art and Industry in Bombay/Mumbai, it was always been used as the official residence of the school's principal. The cottage is a typical colonial building, with high ceilings and sloping roofs and is surrounded by a lush garden. The cottage has been lying vacant for almost a decade and some parts need urgent repairs.

Kipling's home museum, Mumbai

1865 was a significant year. Rudyard was born then but it was also the year his father, Lockwood Kipling, joined the Art School as principal. So this museum has been a possibility for a very long time. What took the Maharashtra state government so long to decide?

There are at least two problems associated with making this bungalow into a centre for honouring Kipling. Firstly, as History and Traditions of England blog noted, Kipling was only aged six when he left Mumbai. Although he often returned to other parts of India, especially Lahore, Simla and Allahabad, the Mumbai house cannot possibly represent his literary endeavours.

This is not an insurmountable problem. The Art School has a vast collection of paintings, dating from 1850, which will now be part of an art museum. Only one of the rooms will be called the Kipling Room and will be dedicated to Kipling material. In any case, Rudyard wasn’t the only Kipling to have made a huge contribution to Indian culture. Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard’s father, had a connection to Mumbai's architectural development. Lockwood’s architectural designs for the Victoria Terminus railway station building and the municipal headquarters opposite it were very important.

There is a more problematic issue to deal with: Rudyard’s colonialist reputation remains controversial for post-colonial writers in India and elsewhere. Orwell called Kipling as a "prophet of British imperialism", a man so devoted to duty, service and empire that his writing was bound to be full of prejudice, racism and an absolute belief in Britain’s military correctness. The White Man's Burden (1899) will suffice as an example:

Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

A Blog About History recognised the problems that the Mumbai museum faces. The municipal government officials with whom the Museum staff deal... refer to the building, not as the Kipling house, but the Dean’s house. Worse, they believe that Kipling is officially still persona non grata, a situation that is rather slow to change. But he was certainly a man of his time and he wrote better than any other writer about British empire-building. The new museum won’t whitewash Kipling’s pro-colonial stance but it will recognise his work as a product of his passionately-felt ideals. No English writer quite put India on the map as keenly as Rudyard Kipling.

Kipling, The Jungle Book

And it is not a problem for today’s children. The Penguin India Blog said the young students in her class adored the imaginative world that Kipling created and the fantastic pictures produced by the illustrators. Blog de Monica noted that The Jungle Book was still totally enjoyable for 21st century children. Even before reaching reading age, children have been able to understand the stories. breathedreamgo blog put Kim at the top of her list of loved books about India. She said she had been reading for 43 years and had never read a book that was so in the moment.

I believe the Maharashtra state government is hoping every child who visits Mumbai will feel the same way.




25 November 2009

Late Victorian pleasure piers Vs inter-war lidos

As I showed in my post on late 19th century amusement centres, sporting activity, fun and healthy living were de rigeur amongst those families with some leisure time on their hands.

Brighton Pier 
1899

iknow Sussex made my point about Victorian and Edwardian seaside architecture. Hastings Pier was the creation of seaside architect Eugenius Birch who modelled the Hastings design on Brighton's West Pier (since lost). Hastings Pier first opened in 1872 and until 2010 was a hub for craft shops and amusements. At Eastbourne, Birch's glorious pier (1872) still stands in good condition. Eastbourne Pier stretches 1000’ out to sea and with its wide promenade proved perfect strolling ground for the upper classes arriving at Eastbourne and the Devonshire Hotels through the Victorian and Edwardian era.

Once the railway from London reached Southend, there was a great influx of summer time visitors. The large number of people must have made a bit of a mess of the existing wooden pier and in 1873, it was sold to the local council. Soon the Southend council decided to replace the pier with a new iron structure which was completed in 1889 at great expense.

Saltdean Lido, 1937, 
with curved cafe in the centre

Brighton's Palace Pier, when it was opened in 1899, represented the finest architectural example of late Victorian seaside architecture. The Palace Pier was and is a centre for entertainment and for strolling by holiday visitors. [This was unlike its predecessor, the Chain Pier, with its function as docking site]. The late 19th century was a golden age of seaside resort architecture and entertainment centres, so the Palace Pier was appropriately ornate and eccentric in its architectural style, with creative use of cast-iron snakes on lamp posts. By 1911 the pier had its own theatre, and ever since then, additions and modernisations have occurred.

Something happened in the inter-war period! The popularity of water sports encouraged many seaside resort councils to invest heavily in entertainment areas, to cater for the dramatic increase in the numbers of holiday makers. But now families wanted something different. As Douglas d'Enno wrote, it became as essential to have a lido as it had been to have a pier, forty years before. A lido was a public outdoor swimming pool and ALL the surrounding facilities needed for swimming, sunbaking and water sports. Perhaps the timing of the lidos was due to the introduction of mixed bathing in the more relaxed inter-war period.

By the late 1930s, lidos had opened in Prestatyn (1922), Blackpool (1923), Plymouth (1928), Exmouth (1929), Skegness (1932), Hastings and St Leonards (1933), New Brighton and Wallasey (1934), Brighton (1935), Penzance (1935), Morecambe (1936) and Weston-super-Mare (1938). Bournemouth had indoor AND outdoor pools.

New Anzac musings blog wrote that a gem of a Lido Land lies on the South Coast Road at Saltdean near Brighton. It was designed by RWH Jones in 1937, in the Art Deco style, and opened the following year. Time-wise, location-wise and style-wise, the Lido owed a debt to the De La Warre Pavilion at nearby Bexhill-On-Sea, which itself had only opened in Dec 1935. The clever use of curved steel and glass created a feeling of space and movement. As in most 1930s lido designs, the buildings were meant to remind the viewer of an ocean cruiser’s stylish lines. The Lido had a café in the central block, changing rooms on the ground floor and sun terraces above these, which the Art Deco Blog showed beautifully.

Brockwell Lido London, 
1937

You will remember from my post on The Bexhill Pavilion that Bexhill provided sun baking on the deck, fabulous afternoon teas in the coffee shop and art work in the gallery. The Lido in Saltdean, renovated in 1998, provided sun baking on the deck, fabulous afternoon teas in the coffee shop and swimming in the Lido pool.

Tired of London, Tired of Life discussed Parliament Hill Lido, opened in 1938 in Hampstead Heath. If the entrance of Parliament Hill Lido reminds you of Brockwell Lido, apparently the initial design intentionally replicated that of Victoria Park Lido 1936 (later demolished) and Brockwell Park Lido 1937 (later removed and expanded). Art Deco Buildings has a tragic list of those lidos that were eventually doomed.



23 November 2009

Isle of Man Internment Camps, 1940

One of the most controversial issues of Britain's Second World War, the internment of Enemy Aliens and some British subjects on the Isle of Man from 1940 on, has only slowly emerged from under the total silence of official secrets. Two books look promising. I haven’t seen them in Australia yet, so I will reprint the publishers’ summaries.


The first account of the Isle of Man camps between 1940-45 is called Island of Barbed Wire: The Remarkable Story of World War Two Internment on the Isle of Man by Connery Chappell, 2005. At the outbreak of war there were c75,000 people of Germanic origin living in Britain, and Whitehall decided to set up Enemy Alien Tribunals to screen these 'potential security risks'. The entry of Italy into the war almost doubled the workload. The first tribunal in Feb 1940 considered only 569 cases as high enough risks to warrant internment. The Isle of Man was chosen as the one place sufficiently removed from areas of military importance, but by the end of the year the number of enemy aliens on the island had reached 14,000. With the use of diaries, broadsheets, newspapers and personal testimonies, the author shows how a fun holiday island was transformed into a rather nasty internment camp. Boarding houses became barrack blocks, and many hoteliers welcomed the means of earning extra income.

Eventually the internees took part in local farm work, ran their own camp newspapers and set up internal businesses. With very special inmates like Lord Weidenfeld (publisher), Professor Geoffrey Elton (academic), Sir Charles Forte (hotelier), Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (art historian), RW Tiny Rowland (international businessman), the life of the camp quickly took on a busy and constructive air. But the picture was not a happy one. Angry disputes flared between Fascist inmates, on one hand, and the Jewish Europeans who had fled Germany, on the other. Even now, there remains the persistent question never settled satisfactorily. Were the internments ever justified or even consistent?

John Simkin  added that conditions in these internment camps were often appalling. In some camps refugees and foreign aliens were housed in tents, sleeping on the cold English ground. Men and women were sent to different camps, so families were split up. Internees were refused to right to read newspapers, listen to the radio or to receive letters, so they were unable to discover what had happened to family members. All internees were placed behind the same barbed wire, although at least the Mooragh camp was separated, keeping the pro-British, German Jewish internees safe from the pro-German, British Fascist internees.

The second book, Totally un-English? Britain’s Internment of Enemy Aliens in Two World Wars edited by Richard Dove in 2005, covered similar territory, but for both world wars. In the Great War, Britain interned some 30,000 German nationals, most of whom had been long-term residents. In fact, internment brought little discernible benefit, but cruelly damaged lives and livelihoods, breaking up families and disrupting social networks. In May 1940, under the threat of imminent invasion, the British government interned some 28,000 Germans and Austrians, mainly Jewish refugees from the Third Reich. It was a measure which provoked lively criticism, not least in Parliament, where one MP called the internment of refugees ‘totally un-English’.


I have not changed the photos on the front of the published books. They both selected the same image.

Few bloggers seem interested in the subject, even though Australia and other countries are agonising over very similar issues today.  Second World War blog compared the Isle of Man camps with internment camps in France.  The Sharpener blog also mentioned the British camps.  Peter G drew attention to a very early book (1980) called Collar the Lot! How Britain Interned & Expelled its Wartime Refugees by Peter and Leni Gillman.

Only Skeddan made some critical points. In WW2 the camps were used for political detainees including those held under section 18B of Defence Regulations. This enabled the Government to imprison those citizens thought to be dangerous to national security without charge, trial or set term. This included not only Enemy Aliens, but also British subjects, so constitutionally this measure was on very thin ice. Since Isle of Man is not part of UK, these detainees were not under the jurisdiction of English courts but subject to royal prerogative. The Isle of Man served as a kind of a constitutional black hole, like Guantanamo Bay.

In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention without Trial in Wartime Britain was written by AW Brian Simpson and published by Oxford University Press in 1995. It discusses the detentions of British citizens that took place in summer 1940, soon after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. It occurred when belief in the existence of a dangerous fifth column was widespread.

**
Now a new book. Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees During the First World War was written by Panikos Panayi and published by Manchester University Press in 2012.  Panayi recorded the experiences of hundreds of thousands of German captives and detainees held in camp at Knockaloe on the Isle of Man during the conflict; their numbers peaked at 115,950, comprising 24,522 male civilian and 91,428 male military internees.



21 November 2009

Dunera and its Jewish Internees in 1940

The BBC said in 1940 thousands of Germans, Austrians and Italians in Britain were sent to camps set up at racecourses and incomplete housing estates, such as Huyton outside Liverpool. That many of the enemy aliens were Jewish refugees and therefore hardly likely to be sympathetic to the Nazis, didn’t seem to ring alarm bells. The majority were interned on the Isle of Man; in one Isle of Man camp, over 80% of the internees were Jewish refugees, most of whom had fled Germany and Austria after Kristallnacht 9/11/1938.


Because they were considered a risk to British security, 7,000+ internees were deported, the majority to Canada, some to Australia. The liner Arandora Star left for Canada in July 1940 carrying German and Italian internees, but it was torpedoed and sunk with huge loss of life.

2,542 men were taken to Australia on the Dunera, sailing a week after the Arandora Star. The BBC reported internees were subjected to humiliating treatment and intentionally abysmal conditions on the two-month voyage. Many had their possessions destroyed by the British military guards.

The ship arrived in Australia in June 1939, then the men was taken for internment in the tiny rural towns of Hay in New South Wales and Tatura in Victoria. Among the men on the Dunera who had so threatened Britain’s very security were sensitive, educated men like artists Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, art historians Franz Phillipp and Ernst Kitzinger, composer Felix Werder, photographer Henry Talbot, mathematician Dr Felix Behrend and Franz Stampfl, later Australia’s most brilliant athletics coach.

Whereas the British guards on the Dunera were brutal and anti-Semitic, the Australian guards were reported to be kind and generous with their own food and cigarettes. The internees were placed in barracks that housed 28 men apiece. Barbed wire and guard towers surrounded the perimeter, but the guards rarely intruded and the internees ran their own affairs through an elected parliament. They developed soccer teams, a choral and theatre group; they printed a newspaper and they published books.

So educated were these men that while they were interned in rural prison camps, they set up their own unofficial university to pass the time and to deal with Australia's hot summer weather.

Tatura Internment Camp, Victoria

The Dunera story is a testament to the human spirit, the ability of young men to survive, despite the Holocaust that befell their parents and siblings in Europe. Today the Dunera Museum in Hay is an internment centre that houses exhibits documenting the history of one of Australia’s lesser moments in history. It is located in Hay’s old railway station platform and two train carriages.

Why were the Jewish men so unwelcome in Australia? Two pressing factors lay behind Australia’s attitude to Jewish refugees. One was the high level of unemployment in the wake of the Depression, and the fear that a wave of refugees would take jobs from Australian workers. This was the generally held view about immigration in Australia before WW2, although we now know that migrants create more jobs than they occupy.

The second factor was Australia’s status as a self-described “British society.” As Australian Memories of the Holocaust noted Prime Minister Stanley Bruce said in 1928 that he wanted Australians to remain “essentially a British and white people.” In April 1938 the Australian Interior Minister, John McEwen, wrote in a Cabinet submission:

“The Jews are highly intelligent as a class and usually make a success of whatever occupation or business they fellow, but in view of their religious beliefs and strict rules as regards marriage, they remain a separate race, and this failure to become properly assimilated in the country of adoption appears to create difficulties in any country where they form a considerable proportion of the population.”

Even the Labour opposition party didn’t want Jews coming in. Labour MP Albert Green said about Jewish refugees in 1939: “My opposition to this proposal is far stronger than it would be if the immigrants were of the Nordic race and came from northern European countries. People from those places would help to develop Australia.

Dunera Museum, Hay

ex-railway station, Hay

An excellent article on the Dunera Boys is in National Library Magazine, June 2010. It was written by Dr Susannah Helman, Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at the National Library of Australia in Canberra and curator of a specialist exhibition in 2010 called Dunera Boys: Seventy Years On.




18 November 2009

19th century amusement centres, healthy living, sport, fun

Max Liebermann, 
Boys Bathing, 1898

The concept of "healthy living" witnessed the peak of its development by the late C19th and early C20th. Once most people had left the countryside and moved into city life, the seaside held a held a special position in peoples’ thinking as a place of cleanliness, good health, fresh air, exercise and above all fun. But when more pleasure-orientated themes emerged in the late C19th, seaside holiday resorts had to compete with man-made entertainment centres, often water-based.

It was largely in Germany that the healthy living movement concerned itself more with rigorous exercise, good food and fresh air, and less with fun and relaxation. Max Liebermann and other artists documented young men swimming, running naked and staying fit. [Of course as soon as I say that, Victorian/Edwardian Paintings produces muscle-rippling images by British artist Henry Tuke who depicted young, athletic male nudes basking in the sun on a Cornish beach].


Vienna, Prater Park

Examine some sporting and entertainment centres of the late C19th. St Kilda Baths is an old Melbourne institution which I have photographed in this blog before. The cold sea baths and hotel on St Kilda main beach were originally called the Gymnasium Baths 1862. Since swimming from the open beach was prohibited during daylight hours, bathers were obliged to keep within the walls of the baths. The complex must have been quite exciting because it included a gymnasium, refreshment rooms and a swimming space in the bay that was protected from sharks. How clever of the designers to maximise the entertainment opportunities offered during the hot months. The hot sea baths and changing sheds came later, but eventually it all burned down and was replaced with a piece of exotica called South Pacific, complete with Arabian style façade (sic).

Vienna's World Expo of 1873 was built in Prater Park, located on Danube and Canal on an isolated island in the NE part of the city. The arrival of coffee-houses and cafés led to the start of the Wurstelprater, but it was never a centre of active sports; its c4,000 acres included more leisurely entertainment: lawns, gardens, landscaped lakes, forests. The 61 m in diameter Riesenrad wheel, at the entrance of the Prater, was not erected until 1897, to celebrate Emperor Franz Josef I's golden Jubilee. For wonderful photos of the 1873 Expo, see the Dinosaurs and Robots blog.

Cabaret Berlin said that until 1933, one of Europe's largest amusement park was Luna Park in the Halensee area of Berlin at the far end of the Kurfüstendamm. It featured a water slide, swimming pool,  theatres, jazz and cabaret stages, dance halls, Bavarian-themed beer village, nightly fireworks displays and boxing tournaments. The restaurants and bars could seat 16,000 people!

The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was the first world's fair with an area for amusements that was specifically removed from the more serious exhibition spaces. Midway Plaisance included carnival rides, side shows and the John Phillip Sousa band. But above all it had the original Ferris wheel, designed by George Washington Ferris, as an entertainment centrepiece. It consisted of an upright, rotating wheel, with passenger gondolas attached to the rim. Brian Karpuk at newsburglar suggested the Ferris Wheel was the Chicago Expo’s answer to the 1889 Paris Expo’s Eiffel Tower.

Chicago Expo's entertainment area

The Kursaal Amusement Park and Gardens at Southend On Sea in Essex was the brainchild of some local professional men who bought land in town to build a new park, for both residents and holiday makers. This Marine Park and Gardens section opened in 1894. The Kursaal section was completed in 1901, with a great silver dome over the entrance. Presumably the spa part of the complex was intended as a place of healthy amusement. The other fun facilities included a circus, ballroom, arcade with amusements, dining hall, games rooms an extremely long pleasure pier. Livepoets blog has wonderful seaside resort images from after the turn of the century.

Southend, Essex

Perhaps the most amazing entertainment, amusement and healthy living centre was in Edinburgh. The Royal Patent Gymnasium was designed by businessman and philanthropist John Cox. Cox had decided that Edinburgh citizens required somewhere to exercise and improve their physical fitness, and conceived the idea of using a large sheltered area in the northern part of Edinburgh New Town as an open-air pleasure-ground for the 'promotion of healthful recreation'. Opened in 1865, it was definitely part of the commitment to healthy recreation.

As you can see from the 1867-68 advertisements, the Gymnasium's showpiece was a giant rotary boat for rowers. In addition, the Gym also provided equipment for outdoor games in summer and ice-skating in winter. It included an extensive exhibition hall, erected in 1868; a velocipede merry-go-round, 160’ in circumference; a gigantic see-saw, 100’ long; extensive ponds with supply of small boats and canoes; swimming baths; a training bicycle course, with bicycles for hire; and an athletics track. Brass bands played music on weekends. For a 6d entrance fee, each customer bought a great deal of exercise and fun.

Royal Patent Gym Edinburgh, 
rotary boat

The Royal Patent Gymnasium was hugely popular, until the end of the century when all the equipment was taken away. The site later became a football pitch for St Bernard's Football Club.

The Purkersdorf Sanitarium in Vienna was not an amusement centre, but it was not a hospital either. And it really wasn't late 19th century either, starting as it did in 1903. But it _was_ part of the healthy living movement, available to that part of Viennese society who could afford its mineral baths, physical therapies, therapeutic massages and physiotherapy. Through silence, exercise, fresh air and rather austere architecture, cures of the new illnesses such as nervousness, and hysteria were sought. Fortunately for the residents, reading rooms, card rooms, table tennis, billiards and music were also provided.

A very similar sort of sanatorium was identified by ThinkShop and at the very same time. Max Bircher founded a sanatorium in Zürich in 1904 and, because it was based on harmony between people and nature, he called it Living Force. As at Purkersdorf, this clinic appealed to the well heeled who flocked there to rejuvenate their bodies and souls. Again like Purkersdorf, the residents had to follow a somewhat rigorous daily schedule that involved early bedtime, physical training and active gardening work. But Bircher added another element, perhaps his most important contribution to healthy living: the healing power of raw fruits, vegetables and muesli.





16 November 2009

Women's Cultural Salons: literature, music, art, politics

I have been fascinated by the range of creative talent and interest that salonieres managed to get together in the privacy of their homes, largely during the 1795-1905 era. These women may well have had important fathers and husbands, but I am certain that it was their own organising skills that created the perfect ambience for their guests. I am equally certain that the salonieres made important contributions in their own right to the progress of 19th century literature, music and art.

You can find three posts (so far) on the topic:
1. Jewish Women: early 19th century salons
2. Berta Zuckerkandl, Vienna's Saloniere, and
3. Jewish Women: Later 19th-Century Salons a guest post for the At My Soiree blog.


Examine how well connected Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus was. On the left she posed with Edgar Degas and two other very smartly dressed gentlemen. Marcel Proust seems to have taken the photo. On the right are Guy de Maupassant, Madame de Broissia, Visconte Eugène Melchior de Vogue, Madame Straus and Generale Anenkoff (credit: Nel mondo di Marcel Proust page)

15 November 2009

Lady of Shalott: Keeping the Lady

Towers are ambiguous structures. The keep, or tower, holds people in and out. Towers are bulwarks against what is outside: the chaos of nature, marauders, and things that go bump in the night. Towers protect the outside from what is locked within: the prisoner, the crazy woman, the hunchback. They are spires rising to God, symbol of male sexuality, and sanctuary for hermits, saints, and damsels.

In Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott” and “Lancelot and Elaine” (from The Idylls of the King) towers are, unsurprisingly, ambiguous structures. There are the bulwarks of “many tower’d Camelot,” the defences for the court. A tower is refuge and chamber for Elaine of Astolat. In her tower, she guards Lancelot’s shield, creates the elaborate silk case for it, and pines away with unrequited love for the knight. The Lady of Shalott lives and works in her tower, and, depending on how one interprets the poem, it keeps her in, either to protect her from the outside world or to protect the society of Camelot from her.

Holman Hunt, Lady of Shalott, 1890s, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut

It is likely that Tennyson added the detail of the tower for both of his damsels. The source for “Lancelot and Elaine” is Malory’s The Morte Darthur; for “The Lady of Shalott,” it is La Donna di Scalotta, an Italian work from the thirteenth century. The source for the story of Elaine of Astolat/Scalotta in both Malory and the Italian work is the early thirteenth-century Mort Artu. Malory’s work is a close paraphrase of the earlier French work, and there is no tower for Elaine in Malory. That suggests that there is also no tower in Tennyson’s Italian source for “The Lady of Shallot.”

It’s an important point because of the sheer number of isolating features, all created by Tennyson for the Lady. He has acknowledged that the island, mirror, and web are his inventions (Marshall 59). Add the tower, and the Lady’s security is indeed tight. She is on an island, in a tower, able to see the outside world only in a mirror. In case this is not enough, there is a curse which keeps her in place.

The poem is more about keeping the Lady in, unable to damage society, which fits with a thread that runs through many Arthurian tales. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in Malory’s The Morte Darthur, and, notably, in Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, there are ideological threats to the idealized world of Camelot, threats to the fundamentals of the chivalric code. They are fertility, faerie, art and artifice, and fate, the older Celtic elements, seen in the shape-shifting Green Knight, Merlin, and Morgan Le Fay. Additionally, women, especially outside of the marriage contract – legitimately or otherwise – are always a threat to the idealized fellowship of the knights.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Celtic game and artifice expose not only the possibility of too much pride in Arthur’s court, but the impossibility of upholding the chivalric code in its entirety, including the rules for courtly love.

In Malory’s The Morte Darthur, Arthur insists on burning Guinevere for her infidelity. He says that he may have queens aplenty, but such a fellowship of good knights will not happen again (Malory 114). Only marriage and the appearance of fidelity can contain and control the disruptive force of women in the world of Camelot. When the system fails, or fails publicly, the woman must be punished and removed to preserve the system. Guinevere escapes burning mostly because of Gawain’s pleas on her behalf.

In Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, Guinevere is a jealous shrew, much worse than Lancelot who may be guilty of dire insensitivity, but not infidelity. Both Elaine and Guinevere are disruptive, unpleasant elements in the ideal world of the noble king and his knights.

The Lady of Shalott is faerie, woman, and artist. With her art, she is not of the world of nature; she is not of the world of ideas. Her secondhand image of Camelot, like Lady Elaine’s image of Lancelot’s shield on the silk case, substitutes the artificial for the real.

The Lady of Shalott comprises all the elements most threatening to the world of Camelot. Her tower, on an island, in a river, keeps her isolated and away from the highly idealized world of the knights and their ladies in Camelot. Her escape can only end with her death, for she is the triple-fold threat that leads to the break-up of the fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table.

Not surprisingly, the Lady of Shalott comprises many of the elements most threatening to Victorian society, at least to appearances in the male-dominated public sphere. Relegated to the private sphere, her mystery and sexuality are controlled. She cannot be an artist; weaving and embroidery become merely household arts.

John Waterhouse, Lady of Shalott Looking at Lancelot, 1894, Leeds Art Gallery.

The home is the Victorian equivalent of the Lady of Shalott’s tower. The husband is the mirror, the Victorian woman’s only access to the outside world. The lady’s arts are not creative, only mimetic.

The lie is in the ambiguity of towers. Victorians wished to believe they were keeping the lady safe by keeping her in. Really they were keeping the male-dominated world of appearances safe from her power. An angel in the house is still an angel.

Canadian Loreena McKennitt has written a beautiful song version of “The Lady of Shalott” which is nearly verbatim. The visuals in this video are beautiful.

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Malory,Thomas. The Morte Darthur. Ed. D.S. Brewer. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP. 1974.
Marshall., George. A Tennyson Handbook. NewYork: Twayne, 1963.

Many thanks for this guest blog, written by
ChrisJ
At My Soiree




12 November 2009

Vienna's Ringstrasse: 1860-1890

A very young Emperor Franz Joseph came to the throne of Austria in 1848 and reigned for a long 68 years. Franz Joseph made a great difference to the look of his capital city, demolishing the city’s defensive, medieval walls in 1857 to build an imperial boulevard as an expression of the glorious Habsburg Empire. The Ringstrasse was never meant to divide the old city from the new; rather, I had assumed, it was a place for café society to see and be seen. In fact the walls had long been useless as a defensive structure in times of war and were an actual hinderance to free movement and trade within the newly enlarged city.

The Ringstrasse was the resulting new, wide boulevard, surrounding the centre of Vienna, today the First District and joining the city to the suburbs. The 4 ks of boulevard, and the buildings on both sides, took 30 years to complete (in 1890) and now is the defining characteristic of C19th Viennese grandeur. It’s enclosed by linden and plane trees, and little trams moving in both directions in a very efficient, clean system.

Ringstrasse trams and trees

A new golden age of building came to Vienna, based on this gracious Ringstrasse: all the city’s monumental institutions were located there. The buildings already present in the Innere Stadt were churches and imperial buildings; the new Ringstrasse developments were buildings which stressed secular culture and the new constitutional government, including the Parliament, Rathaus, University.

At least two institution were already in place, before the walls came down. So Franz Joseph cannot be blamed if you don’t like the Museum of Military History 1850-6 or the Votivkirche 1856-79. The museum designed by Ludwig Foerster and Theophil Hansen, taking elements from Byzantine, Hispano-Moorish and Neo-Gothic styles. The Votivkirche, built as an offering of thanks by architect Heinrich von Ferstel, was designed in the neo-Gothic style. Since the city-walls still existed at that point, the church wasn’t located exactly along the boulevard.

Staatsoper/Opera House 1863-9 was one of the first classical buildings along Ringstrasse. Presumably the architects chose the Italian Renaissance style since that era had been important for art and music. Visitors and tourists could walk around the very sumptuous interiors, then go straight to the Hotel Sacher for an after-the-performance supper!

Opera House, 1869

The Rathaus 1872-83 was designed by Friedrich von Schmidt in the Gothic style. The building served as the seat of the city council of Vienna and mayor, AND served as the assembly of the State of Vienna within Austria’s federal system. Facing the Rathaus is large lovely park, Rathauspark. Brennan McNulty's Blog provided very useful information on the Wien Museum in Karlsplatz. The museum collects material on the history of the city to art, fashion and modern culture, from the earliest settlements to the present day. [This museum was founded in 1887 and housed until after WW2 in the Rathaus].

Parliament House built 1874-83, designed by architect Baron Theophil von Hansen in the Greek revival style. He was also responsible for the interior decoration such as statues, paintings, furniture and chandeliers. NB statue of Athena and the fountain, a notable Viennese tourist attraction. Since destruction in WW2, most of the Parliamentary interior has been fully restored. Marble was everywhere. The debating chamber and galleries were based on an ancient Greek theatre. The classical Hall of Pillars was used for formal receptions.

Kunsthistorische Museum, 1891

The Kunsthistorische Museum 1871-91 was build by architects Gottfried Semper and Carl Hasenauer. The visitor went through the lobby and up the stairs, past Canova's sculpture of Theseus and the Centaur. The Museum was an elaborate, neo renaissance building, as befitted such a fine and elaborate art collection, and was the first time that the entire collection could be gathered in one place. Of course since the gallery held 8000 paintings and only about 800 could be displayed at any one time, there was and is still a large portion of the collection in storage.

The University was founded in 1365 and is thus the oldest university in the German-speaking world. The main building on the Ringstraße was built by Heinrich von Ferstel 1877-84. The old building was located close to the Stuben Gate, Iganz Seipel Square, current home of the old University Church and Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Vienna needed its own very prestigious theatre of course, and so the Burgtheatre 1888 became another important public building to be completed along the newly laid out Ringstrasse. On the façade, busts of poets and famous characters from world literature were complimented by pairs of figures which provided the themes of many plays. The Burgtheatre had 2 long wings, each containing a magnificent staircase. The centre of the theatre was bombed during WW2 and had to be rebuilt, but the 2 staircases, with ceiling frescoes by Klimt, were safe. The interior, with 4 tiers, was splendid.

This was followed by the Museum of Natural History and Parliament House, classical architecture in the Habsburg taste. The Museum of Natural History 1872-91 was one of the important museums of this type, built to house the extraordinary collection of the Habsburgs. The museum’s two buildings were designed by Gottfried Semper and Karl von Hasenauer.

Burgtheatre, 1888

Franz Joseph culture was based on great architecture and parks, but it was also based on Vienna’s café society. In 1685 Emperor Leopold I granted an Armenian merchant the exclusive 20-year right to serve coffee and the drinking of Viennese-style coffee soon spread over central Europe: Marseilles and Paris, soon after Vienna, 1683; Nuremberg and Regensburg, 1686; Hamburg, 1687; Stuttgart, 1712; Berlin, 1721. By 1714 Vienna had already 11 licensed coffee houses.

During this period, the Neuner’s coffee house established itself as Vienna’s leading literary café. Its regular patrons included the best-known authors of the Biedermeier period. In 1824 Ignaz Neuner upgraded his café to the Silver Coffee House, Vienna’s most luxurious café. All the utensils and room accessories were made of silver. After the Silver Coffee House’s heyday, Café Griensteidl welcomed Viennese literary luminaries with an antique folksy decor and daily newspapers. And Café Zentral was elegant from the outside and gorgeous inside. Note that whereas Paris cafes concentrated on coffee, alcohol and a bohemian life style, Viennese cafes concentrated on coffee, cakes, stringed quartets and an elegant lifestyle.

Demel’s pastry shop in Michaelerpaltz was first founded in 1785. Patissier Christoph Demel acquired the business in 1857 and moved to its present position in 1888. An elaborate ground floor window-display showcased the confection shop. An upstairs café, the meeting point for the old high society.

A majestic palace, the Vienna residence of the Prince of Württemberg, was built on the magnificent Ringstrasse in 1863. Transformed into a sumptuous hotel for the world exhibition in 1873, Hotel Imperial still showcases the C19th romance of Vienna with marble, statues and spectacular crystal chandeliers. Right from the beginning it enjoyed a world-wide reputation as close to the opera, equipped with highest elegance and large comfort. The Sacher Hotel has been popular with the rich and famous ever since it opened in 1876 by pastry chef Franz Sacher's son, Eduard Sacher and his wife, Anna. Potatomato Blog concentrated on Ringstrasse food (naturally!) and reported that Sacher’s was still top notch.

Yet by 1873 Vienna held a reduced image in the minds of the rest of the world. The Austria-Hungary Empire had lost a significant amount of land and power over the last two decades, and a war with France and conflicts with Prussia had triggered internal social and economic upheavals. So there were several specific goals for a World Expo. Vienna wanted show off its economic reconstruction and position itself as a centre of exchange between the East and West, an empire equal in importance to France and Britain.

In 1870 Emperor Franz Joseph approved the Expo plan and put Baron Wilhelm von Schwarz-Sendborn, the man who had organised Austrian exhibits at previous world's fairs, in charge. Baron Schwarz-Sendborn wanted "a truly universal exhibition that would embrace every field on which human intellect has been at work".

The opening of the Vienna World Expo 1873 was an expression of the Habsburg monarchy’s material progress and economic achievement. The years of expansive commercial enterprise in late 1860s-early 1870s were characterised by railroad and industrial expansion, and the growth of Vienna. I won’t discuss the Expo’s location and facilities since Prater Park is nowhere near the Ringstrasse. But we need to note that the old railway station in the city had become too small and had to be rebuilt in time for the Expo. The splendid new Nordbahnhof building was completed in 1865, along with its sculptures and fresco painters.

Mozart in a Ringstrasse Park

Eventually the Ringstrasse parks were filled with musicians’ statues: Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss, and concerts offered music by Mendelssohn, Schubert, Mahler, Brahms and Johann Strauss. The poet Frederick von Schiller was also celebrated, in front of the Fine Arts Academy. The Vienna of Franz Josef took its culture very seriously. Even today, if something really matters in Vienna, it's on the Ringstrasse.





09 November 2009

Remember Them: Guide to Victoria's Wartime Heritage

Like historian Garrie Hutchinson, who we will meet in a moment, I had a very powerful moral and political objection to the Vietnam war. My grandfather had been a soldier-translator in the 1914-18 war and my father was an engineer in the 1939-45 war. But I did whatever was open to a civilian to bring about the end of conscription for Vietnam. And I still grieve for the parents who lost their sons in all wars.

Those of you who follow this blog will know that I am very interested in the community memorials created to mourn those appalling losses. You can find my earlier posts on war memorials in:
Mildura: a rural city full of Art Deco gems,
Charles Sargeant Jagger II: low reliefs,
Charles Sargeant Jagger I: war and sex,
Australian Bandstands in the Federation Era and
Melbourne's Shrine and the Great Depression.

Within a few years after the end of World War One, there would have been very few towns throughout Australia that did not have their own war memorial. Steve Gower of the Australian War Memorial noted that quite a few were simple stone figures of a classless soldier without rank, of sombre expression, resting on his arms, reversed on a plinth. Usually a roll of honour provided a list of locals who had enlisted, with the names of those who died indicated by a asterisk.

Or there was no individual soldier statue at all. Instead communities may have chosen a cenotaph, a vertical slab of granite that resembled a large headstone, a memorial arch, a ceremonial gate into the local park, a Cross of Sacrifice or a statue of a grieving mother. Internet Curtains blog, in examining the Triumphal Arch at Victoria Embankment in Nottingham, believed the choice of memorial needed to be sensitive to the real politics of the war being memorialised. Nottingham’s triumphal arch in portland stone with intricate iron detailing may have been over-the-top, Chris believed, but at least the patron showed enough good taste not to commission a corpse, a Portland stone artillery gun or a lion trampling a snake.

Garrie Hutchinson’s latest book is called Remember Them: A Guide to Victoria's Wartime Heritage. The publishers wrote: Victoria's wartime and military heritage encompasses a vast range of memorials, from the majestic Shrine of Remembrance to local war monuments, honour boards, cemeteries, Avenues of Honour, sculptures, museums and memorabilia. Each memorial commemorates the lives, courage and sacrifice of the local soldiers who served in the various theatres of war around the world, from WW1 and WW2, Korea, Vietnam and more recent battles. This detailed guidebook shares the personal stories of the individuals honoured in 250 of Victoria's key war memorials, both metropolitan and rural. Arranged geographically, with accompanying maps and photographs, the book provides a unique insight into the nation’s wartime history and the local heroes who fought.

Charlton memorial, rural Victoria, date?

I will select just one Victorian town as an example. The Charlton memorial was designed as a white marble Digger statue on granite obelisk that has four wings at the base. A series of granite posts surrounds the memorial, the first saying In Memory Of The Soldiers Of Charlton and Didstrict Who Gave Their Lives For The Empire During The Great War 1914-1919. The second says Erected By The Citizens Of Charlton And District In Memory Of Those Who Paid The Supreme Sacrifice World War 2, 1939-1945. The name of every local lad who served, was wounded or died in battle is listed individually on the marble plaques.

The Age (8/11/09)  said that it was Hutchinson's sixth book on military history and pilgrimage. Yet as an enemy of Vietnam War conscription, he felt hounded out from a State Government job as a project officer in veterans’ heritage, where his work involved military commemoration and education. Hutchinson found tragic and heroic stories all over Victoria, carved into granite or marble; built in bronze; on monuments in main streets, parks or cemeteries; on honour boards in community halls, Mechanics' Institutes and clubs in every community. They mark sacrifice, devotion to duty and family loss in the state's wartime heritage, from colonial times on. In many ways our monuments and war memorials speak to that unique national character, he claims. “If you look at the statues that are all about the place, they're all about mateship, helping each other, compassion and volunteering.

Small and large communities in other states, devastated by the loss of their young men, also built special memorials. Your Brisbane Past and Present blog has 3 posts that include an equine Boer War statue, once in Edward St Brisbane and moved to Anzac Square instead. The Second Boer War (1899-1902) started just prior to federation in this country, but Australians still flocked to the defence of the empire on horseback. And simple memorials in small Queensland country towns.

The Sydney City and Suburbs blog located many such sites eg1 Enfield War Memorial in the south western suburbs of Sydney. Built to remember World War I servicemen, it was unveiled in 1924. The Howitzer gun on the sandstone pedestal was donated by the French government in recognition of Australia’s heroic wartime support. Eg2 Cronulla War Memorial is an obelisk with a paved sandstone base, a sandstone block mid-section and a polished granite top section. The main inscription says “1914-1919 Honour Roll Cronulla War Memorial. Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name liveth for evermore.” .

But I wonder. Only the parents, siblings, widows and school friends would have remembered the soldiers by name. Once these people stopped visiting, would subsequent generations ever visit the memorials? For the men involved in the 1914-8 war, I am guessing that the names would have ceased being meaningful to the general community within 30 years. Now citizens pay their communal respect only on Anzac Day (25/4), as shown so sensitively by aussie_time_traveller and many other bloggers.
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Anzac Day, Eden war memorial, NSW

08 November 2009

George B. Shaw, Fabian Society, London School of Economics

The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 by the best and brightest of Britain’s reformist thinkers. Absolutely anyone I would have wanted to correspond with in late Victorian Britain was a member, including Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, Graham Wallas, Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf, Ramsay MacDonald, Emmeline Pankhurst, Annie Besant and Bertrand Russell. Annie Besant was the subject of one of my early posts and a totally fascinating person in her own right.

The Society joined with trade unionists in 1900 to found the Labour Party, suggesting that the Fabians were not merely intellectuals and writers. The key elements of a modern democracy first emerged in Fabian pamphlets. They proposed a minimum wage in 1906, the National Health Service in 1911 and the abolition of hereditary peers in 1917, all of which has or will improve the quality of life of ordinary working families.

Along with Fabian Society members Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb and Graham Wallas, George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) founded the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1895 with his and other private funding. One of the LSE libraries is named in Shaw's honour and now has collections of his papers & photographs.

Window, designed by GB Shaw in 1910, 81 x 76cm
Despite being known as a man of letters, Shaw designed a stained glass window in 1910 as a commemoration of the Fabian Society; it showed fellow Society members helping to build the new world. Artist Caroline Townshend created the window according to Shaw's design, in 1910.

Vitreosity blog was very helpful in decoding the window’s elements. The figures are in Tudor dress to poke fun at Pease who evidently loved everything medieval. The Fabian Society coat of arms was shown as a wolf in sheep's clothing. The first man, crouching on the left, was HG Wells, cocking a snook at the others. He was followed by the actor-manager Charles Charrington, Aylmer Maude (translator of Tolstoy's War and Peace) and G Stirling Taylor (reading a book, New Worlds for Old). The women include suffragist Miss Mabel Atkinson and the artist who made the window, Caroline Townshend.

But where was the window to go? Apparently the window remained in Townshend’s workshop until after World War Two (1947), when Townsend's niece Eva Bourne took the Shaw window away. Perhaps she asked Shaw what he wanted to do with it, but being 91 at the time, he didn’t care.

The timing was good. In 1947 The Webb Memorial Trust bought a large Victorian country house near Dorking Surrey and called it the Beatrice Webb House after one of the Fabian Society’s important founders. The Trust established itself for 'the advancement of education and learning with respect to the history and problems of government and social policy'.

Beatrice and Sidney Webb, and George Bernard Shaw

Bourne presented the Shaw window to Beatrice Webb House in the very year the house was formally opened by the Trust as an educational venue for the Labour party and Fabian Society. The house was opened by Labour prime minister Clement Attlee, also a former LSE lecturer.

It is unclear what happened to the window next. Americans stole from the house in 1978 and took it to Phoenix Arizona, but were they fans of the Fabian Society or its mortal enemies? The window did not resurface until it appeared in a Sotheby's auction in July 2005. The Webb Memorial Trust bought it, transported it back to Britain and have now loaned it to London School of Economics, to grace the School's Shaw Library. The LSE’s Press and Information Office was delighted.
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This time the Fabian window was unveiled by a different Labour prime minister, Tony Blair. 2006 was the centenary year of the Labour Party, and the window had settled into the Fabian-founded London School of Economics and Political Science, the social science university institution founded by the Webbs and Shaw in 1895. And as Coxsoft Art News blog noted, 2006 was also the 150th anniversary of Shaw’s birth. The circle of connections and symbols was complete.

06 November 2009

Cloudland Ballroom Brisbane: a treasure destroyed

A short time ago I had been blogging about Brisbane’s Cloudland, to compare state-approved vandalism in Chicago with state-approved vandalism in Brisbane. I wrote that “possibly every city in the world has senselessly destroyed some of its architectural and historical treasures.

Cloudland was built in Brisbane in 1939-40 and was the venue for every concert and dance programme in that city from 1940 until 1982. Developers moved in at 3 am in November 1982 and illegally demolished this amazing building, full of chandeliers, tiered seating around the dance floor, domed sky lights and rich decorative details. The citizens of Brisbane were devastated, especially the ex-servicemen and their sweethearts who had once enjoyed R & R from the worst fighting in WW2”.

dance floor, domed sky lights, tiered seating and stage, post war

More recently Your Brisbane Past and Present blog wrote movingly of the writer’s personal history with Cloudland Ballroom. Other people wrote of how they had met their future spouse at dances and concerts held during and after World War Two. Sheba Also noted that many a baby was made from a night of competitive ballroom dancing at this particular nightspot.  Everyone mentions the very special view!

Being a Melbournian, I had no idea of the history of Cloudland. Apparently the architect TH Eslick thought he was creating a fun park in Brisbane, based on Luna park in Melbourne which Eslick had himself built in 1912. Another bit of exotica was the funicular railway which ran up the side of the hill, carrying passengers to the rear of the Ballroom. Eslick mysteriously disappeared soon after Cloudland was opened, so the building was left abandoned until 1942. At that stage, in the middle of WW2, the grand space began to be used by the American Military.

The builders believed that “With its private alcoves, upholstered seating, dressing rooms and perfect ventilation, Cloudland Dance Hall will be the finest of its kind in Australia”. It was no exaggeration, and Cloudland was without doubt one of the best dance and concert venues in the country: hard timber floors, décorative columns, sweeping curtains, domed skylights and chandeliers. The upper circle of tiered seating overlooked the floor and stage.

As noted this architectural delight sadly was destroyed by very nasty developers in late 1982 when it was illegally demolished in the early hours of the morning. The event sparked a massive outcry from the local Brisbane community against Queensland’s so-called development-at-any-cost Premier, Joh Bjelke Petersen. Developers had claimed that the old ballroom was beyond repairing.

Ballroom Dancing Competition 1952

Today a new Cloudland has arisen from the ashes. Nic Brunner’s honouring of the grandeur of the destroyed ballroom can be seen in his new design, well photographed in the Architecture Revived blog.  But I am not sure that the name Cloudland, chosen in recognition of the lost architectural landmark, really continues the tradition of the original Cloudland. Once an architectural gem has been destroyed, it can never be replaced.