buckinghama

[buckinghama]

[buckinghama]

[buckinghama]

“Man needs warmth, society, leisure, comfort and security: he also needs solitude, creative work and the sense of wonder. If he recognized this he could use the products of science and industrialism eclectically, applying always the same test: does this make me more human or less human? He would then learn that the highest happiness does not lie in relaxing, resting, playing poker, drinking and making love simultaneously. And the instinctive horror which all sensitive people feel at the progressive mechanization of life would be seen not to be a mere sentimental archaism, but to be fully justified. For man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life, while the tendency of many modern inventions - in particular the film, the radio and the aeroplane - is to weaken his consciousness, dull his curiosity, and, in general, drive him nearer to the animals.”

George Orwell “Can Socialists Be Happy?”

[buckinghama]

“Well, then what? Do we have to conclude that it is the duty of every writer to 'keep out of politics'? Certainly not! In any case, as I have already said, no thinking person can or does genuinely keep out of politics, in an age like the present one.

I only suggest that we should draw up a sharper distinction than we do at present between our political and our literary loyalties, and should recognize that a willingness to do certain distasteful but necessary things does not carry with it any obligation to swallow the beliefs that usually go with them.

When a writer engages in politics he should do so as a citizen, as a human being, but not as a writer. I do not think that he has the right, merely on the score of his sensibilities, to shirk the ordinary dirty work of politics. Just as much as anyone else, he should be prepared to deliver lectures in draughty halls, to chalk pavements, to canvass voters, to distribute leaflets, even to fight in civil wars if it seems necessary. But whatever else he does in the service of his party, he should never write for it.

He should make it clear that his writing is a thing apart. And he should be able to act co-operatively while, if he chooses, completely rejecting the official ideology. He should never turn back from a train of thought because it may lead to a heresy, and he should not mind very much if his unorthodoxy is smelt out, as it probably will be. Perhaps it is even a bad sign in a writer if he is not suspected of reactionary tendencies today, just as it was a bad sign if he was not suspected of Communist sympathies twenty years ago.

But does all this mean that a writer should not only refuse to be dictated to by political bosses, but also that he should refrain from writing about politics? Once again, certainly not! There is no reason why he should not write in the most crudely political way, if he wishes to. Only he should do so as an individual, an outsider, at the most an unwelcome guerrilla on the flank of a regular army. This attitude is quite compatible with ordinary political usefulness. It is reasonable, for example, to be willing to fight in a war because one thinks the war ought to be won, and at the same time to refuse to write war propaganda. Sometimes, if a writer is honest, his writings and his political activities may actually contradict one another.

There are occasions when that is plainly undesirable: but then the remedy is not to falsify one's impulses, but to remain silent.

To suggest that a creative writer, in a time of conflict, must split his life into two compartments, may seem defeatist or frivolous: yet in practice I do not see what else he can do. To lock yourself up in an ivory tower is impossible and undesir-able. To yield subjectively, not merely to a party machine, but even to a group ideology, is to destroy yourself as a writer.

We feel this dilemma to be a painful one, because we see the need of engaging in politics while also seeing what a dirty, degrading business it is. And most of us still have a lingering belief that every choice, even every political choice, is between good and evil, and that if a thing is necessary it is also right.

We should, I think, get rid of this belief, which belongs to the nursery. In politics one can never do more than decide which of two evils is the lesser, and there are some situations from which one can only escape by acting like a devil or a lunatic.

War, for example, may be necessary, but it is certainly not right or sane. Even a General Election is not exactly a pleasant or edifying spectacle. If you have to take part in such things - and I think you do have to, unless you are armoured by old age or stupidity or hypocrisy - then you also have to keep part of yourself inviolate.

George Orwell “Can Socialists Be Happy?”

[buckinghama]

[buckinghama]

[buckinghama]

[buckinghama]

David bowie photographed by Corinne Schwab, 1977.

[buckinghama]

David Shrigley, Please Don't Kill Us, 2007

[buckinghama]

[buckinghama]

Ellsworth Kelly, Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance, 1951-1953

[buckinghama]

Jean Shrimpton on her parents farm in Buckinghamshire, circa 1963.

[buckinghama]

[buckinghama]

[buckinghama]

Loie Fuller(1862-1928)

[buckinghama]

Jeff Koons: Apollo, on view permanently in Hydra, Greece.

[buckinghama]