Wallflower Dispatches

Jodhpurs Nr. 36 by unknown model posing for the Kauffman & Sons* Catalogue in the 1930s. Tailoring by Nardi.

Funny how you can find similar riding boots at Hermès and shop Bottega Veneta for same-style belt.

*For years, Kauffman & Sons Saddlery was a New York Landmark. In 1875, the very same year the Coaching Club was born, a Prussian immigrant named Herman Kauffmann set up shop in lower Manhattan, supplying harnesses for the nags that pulled police carts and fire wagons.

Almost 50 years later, in 1923, H. Kauffman & Sons Saddlery Co. opened at 139 East 24th Street and became one of the largest retailers of riding equipment in the country. It remained there until 1991, when Baruch College acquired the property.

Hermans’ son Isidor Kauffman’s died in 1947. His obituary mentioned that the company “boasted as customers some of the most prominent families in the nation.”

Together with the Miller Harness Company, an equally well known and well stocked tack shop and horse haberdashery a few doors down, Kauffman’s made the block on East 24th Street the equine epicenter of New York.

Bernard Kauffman (1905-2004) constituted the third generation in the business. Bernard Kauffman’s son, Charles Kauffman, was head of the business in 1991 when Kauffman’s left their 24th St. location.

The following was reported in the New York Times (3 March 1991): “One of New York City’s oldest specialty retailers, H. Kauffman & Sons Saddlery Company, is continuing a long evolution uptown and upscale. The purveyor of saddles, boots, riding crops and other equestrian goods, which opened in 1875 on Division Street on the Lower East Side, plans to leave its current 24th Street location and open a new store by May 1 at 419 Park Avenue South, at the corner of 29th Street. Charles Kauffman, chief executive of the family-owned retailer, said the move has been prompted in part by the uncertain future of stores [the store's] current location, a two-story Beaux-Arts building at 139 East 24th Street, between Third and Lexington Avenues. Although preservationists have begun a campaign to have it protected by the city as an historic landmark … it has been slated for demolition by Baruch College, which has its main campus on the same block and wants to expand. Kauffman & Sons has leased space since 1925 in the building, which is currently owned by the L. B. Oil Company of New York. L. B. Oil has agreed to sell it to Baruch…”

Sadly, as of December 2008 the successors to Kauffman’s were a mail-order and internet business.

Amelia Earhart continues to fascinate and influence. Her life, her personality and her sense of style are constantly being discovered by new generations.

Over 40 books (“The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart” by Mary S. Lovell, Susan Butler’s “East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart”), films (Hilary “Amelia”, Amy Adams in a rather dubious “A Night at the Museum 2” – Diane Keaton’s definitive “The Final Flight” anyone?!), clothes (Belstaff’s Amelia Earhart Bomber Jacket) feed off her life and the mystery of her death. Why publish another book?

Susan Wels had unprecedented access to the both the papers of Sally Putnam Chapman, a granddaughter of Earhart’s husband George Palmer Putnam and Purdue University Library. The result is a richly illustrated book with new material ranging from unseen photographs of Amelia herself and personal items such as her goggles and other historic periphenalia such as letters, membership cards and train tickets.

The chapter on Amelia’s disappearance lists the major theories of her final flight and adds new information.

Whether you are a dedicated Earhart fan or just want to find out more about the award- winning pilot, this book is a rich but concise introduction. From a visual point of view, it has the largest and best selection of Amelia photographs both from her youth and later life.

Jodhpurs Nr. 35 by Daniel Macmillan, Viscount Macmillan of Ovenden, Heir to the Second Earl of Stockton.

Seen in Vanity Fair in celebration of the painter John Singer Sargent who in 1922 painted Macmillan’s great-great-grandfather Maurice Macmillan  and his great-uncle Daniel Macmillan (whose brother Harold was Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963) in 1887.

This book collects some of the most famous art work of British graffiti/street artist Banksy. His name is a pseudonym and little is known about him. It is believed that he was born in the 1970s near Bristol.

His work can be seen around London, throughout the UK and abroad.

In 1980s England social, cultural and political criticism was often expressed through pop music, the theatre, TV and some of the national press.

Throughout the 1990s these voices were largely silenced or disappeared and thanks to Banksy’s art satirical commentary of British society moved into the street.

Some pieces are specifically English, while others – such as the Segregation Wall in Palestine – have wider meaning.

Although Banksy is anti-capitalism, a number of his works have been sold by Sotheby’s London for large sums of money. His comment on his website the day after: an image of an auction house scene showing people bidding on a picture that said, “I Can’t Believe You Morons Actually Buy This ****.”

Regardless of the image his has managed to create for himself, Banksy must have a highly talented agent/marketing person that promotes his work and sells the product ‘Banksy’ successfully.

The funniest photos in the book document him hanging pseudo paintings in the Tate Gallery, the Louvre and other great art museums and clocking how long they managed to stay part of the exhibit before someone spotted them.

This week, Banksy’s first film Exit Through the Gift Shop premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Here is Banksy’s website. Click here if you want to be updated when a new Banksy street art appears and see a location map of his work.

The first love for an object – Nutella-soaked breakfast crackers, Glenn Gould and his variations on Goldberg, before Florence in May, even before the nimble feet of Fred Astaire – the love that came before all others was England, and more specifically: London.

Like all other first adolescent emotional attachments this love was abstract, idealistic, unconditional, blind, pure, destructive, passionate, self-indulgent, all-consuming, inspiring and absolute. It remained unrequited, deliciously unfilled and took its allotted place amongst a number of other objects of the same fate.

Unrequited love unravels itself thus: you change, the object of your affection changes or quite simply you learn to live with it, growing a secret inner chamber in your heart.

Now and then coming face to face with your elapsed past you are projected back into this particular moment. The London that hit met full force all those years ago was raw, ugly, beautiful, honest and angry like Paul Weller screaming about injustice for The Jam.

London was the living embodiment of contradiction (one of the worst malaises of adolescence) where Punks hung out on King’s Road and bowler-clad gentlemen ambled along the same path. Both could turn out to be equally polite if asked for directions.

London, the only European city where colour, nationality, social status REALLY didn’t matter and one’s worst character fault was sense of humour failure.

Where the Royal Family was sacred and aloof, but you could find yourself next to the Prince of Wales on the Windsor Polo Field, treading down the divots between chukkas; where you could bump into Terence Stamp, have lunch with the Duchess of York and watch John Malkovich antique hunting. A strange romantic urban paradise that still follows the traces of small lanes from the Middle Ages.

But slowly and unperceptive this handsome unique boy turned into a middle aged sell-out: self-satisfied, spreading mid-waist, materialistic, pre-occupied with insignificant little indispositions and always, always looking inward and into the past.

London was so easy to love, but has downgraded its heritage. Where there was literature, we find confessional autobiographies of second tier never-have-beens. Instead of culture, there is Celebrity Big Brother.

Individuality and personal freedom are confiscated at security, education and knowledge eyed with suspicion. Liberal tendencies are only admitted if they fit into a 16oz Ziploc plastic bag.

The fainting couch at Brown’s Hotel has been replaced by bland European chic, Earl Grey tea time with hooded cappucinos. Tastelessness has been elevated into a style.

Now and then it’s urgent to return and track down these hints of a memory that can suddenly spring into your face on Piccadilly where some men still wear orange corduroys. Or it hits you in Hackney where Caribbeans live in pride and poverty and you bump into the Morrissey wannabee changing trains at Angel station.

Some loves are harder to forget.

The next time you are loitering outside the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly in London, ignore the big names exhibiting at Burlington House and instead look out for a small colourful painting in the road. It is the work of artist Ben Wilson, who over the past five years has painted around 10,000 pieces of chewing gum in the capital.

Ben Wilson’s passion for art was shaped from a very young age. “My father is an artist and so it’s in my blood,” he says. “He did a lot of painting and ceramics, and lots of performance art. I was given a lot of space to explore what I wanted to do and treated as an equal. He gave me opportunities to learn and absorb information if I was excited about something.”

Although he disliked the rigidity of the school system, Wilson studied art at Middlesex, which he found to be a mixed blessing: “I hated the overanalysing of art. Half way through the course I escaped to the grounds next door.”

“Next door” turned out to be a theological college – in Wilson’s words ‘a beautiful site with an old arboretum’ – and Wilson found himself interested in working in the actual grounds itself. “I tried building sculptures in my school and I was excited about the scale. I used to spend my time clearing up everyone’s rubbish all the time and making sculptures out of wood,” he explains, adding: “Then you would walk along and find out that someone had gone joy-riding and they had exploded the sculpture.”

These oversized sculptures fulfilled one of Wilson’s main objectives in creating art: “From the word go, I was always very conscious about making something that was accessible to people, in the sense that it was something that people could make their own mind up about.”

The other aim was to forge a close relationship with the environment Wilson was working in: “I work in an intuitive kind of way, the thing evolves out of silence and stillness. If you have too much of a rigid idea you can’t really communicate with a place that you work in.”

It is hard to imagine finding this stillness in Central London and Wilson agrees, adding: “I have arrived at that.”

So how did he come up with the idea of painting chewing gum? “I did lots of pictures with cigarette butts and crisps packets.

In October 2004, I painted a trail of pictures from Barnet to the West End. I started in Barnet by the common in the countryside and ended up right in urban centre – I wanted to see what would happen. I was doing the pictures for myself.”

What kind of feedback did he have? “It was amazing: People just kept on stopping, a lot of elderly people, kids bunking off school… And I had a positive response.”

However, Wilson soon found himself in trouble with the police: “The first time I got stopped by the police was when I was doing a portrait of a Westie dog, Eddie, the little white dog. I did a whole series of pictures of little dogs.”

Ben Wilson recounts his encounters with the police with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment: “I was arrested and had my DNA taken by force. That wasn’t funny. For months afterwards I still couldn’t work from the pain and bruising.”

What was the offense? “Oh, criminal damage, painting on a piece of chewing gum,” says Wilson. Is it criminal damage? “No,” he says briefly, before adding: “Leaving chewing gum on the street is criminal damage, but I haven’t done that.”

What followed was an ongoing court case but the charges were thrown out: “You do get to know the police. Barnet Police stood up for me and did a witness statement on my behalf, saying ‘We like what he does’. That’s what saved me.”

So is it crazy to carry on? “Doing chewing gum pictures is the sanest thing I have ever done. It’s beautiful really although I say it so myself. Because I have developed a technique which is sound.”

How To Paint a Piece of Chewing Gum

Wilson prefers to call this technique an ‘invention’: “The white chewing gums are not very good they will spread too big,” he explains. “I heat the gum up with a blowtorch. The size of the chewing gum can range from about one centimeter to about four centimetres. You melt the gum and it naturally finds its own level.” Afterwards he uses acrylic to paint on them.

Wilson only started heating up the gum when he found that people want the images to last. “They last because of the technique, but it is fate as well,” he says. “I understand now that there are only so many areas where they can actually happen. You think about the area in terms of patterns. If you have people passing every second, the chewing gum can be damaged, it can be walked on or rained on within minutes of completion.”

How does he handle the commissions? “Commission is the wrong word, I call it requests,” clarifies Wilson. “I didn’t ask to do pictures of people, people ask me. That’s very important.”

He doesn’t charge for the paintings or the time, insisting: “No, no, no it’s a request. People can give me money if they want.”

Instead he appears to find his reward in meeting people: “With the requests people open up and reveal something about their lives – I am still quite amazed about the way it happens. It allows people to reflect aspects of their lives.”

Pavement Philosophies

After five years on the pavement, Wilson has been affected by what he has observed and he has had a lot of time of reflection. “You see a lot of stuff. The immensity of people and just generally people’s positive attitude. I do see amazing resourcefulness.”

“But I do see some patterns, which I find abhorrent. One of them is how things are becoming homogenised; chain stores, uniformity…” Ben Wilson says: “Advertising and public spaces are very controlled. Really, advertisers have a monopoly over public space (and the public mind).”

He seems bewildered by the effect his idea has had: “Advertising is getting more and more into people’s faces all the time and then I am painting a piece of chewing gum and I am getting all this mayhem. I have been maybe questioned 500-700 times by the police, spot-searched….”

But overall his attitude is very positive: “At the same time I am amazed by the individuality of the people and the beauty and diversity of places that I come across, so I am generally quite hopeful.”

He says he doesn’t know how much public money the council spends on having chewing gum removed from the pavement and thinks it’s been cut dramatically since the financial crisis:  “It’s an opportunity!!”

Wilson’s passion and complete belief in what he does overshadows some of the more commercial work he has undertaken over the past few years something barely mentioned in the interview.

Wilson’s work is exhibited at the Contemporary Folk Art Museum, Kaustinen in Finland, the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore, the Lehniner Institut für Kultur und Handwerk near Berlin and the Musgrave-Kinley Outsider Art Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. On the subject he says briefly: “I do sell quite a bit of work, I want to make enough money to survive but it’s doing it the right way.”

Painting chewing gum in the road – is it art or vandalism? “Everyone is affecting the environment just by being a human being. I call it ‘urban tumbleweed’ which is human hair, grey hair, black hair dyed hair… you see it flowing around in the shopping malls mixed in with rubbish, wrappers.”

Concludes Wilson: “I am caring about the environment I am working in – in my rucksack I have a dustpan and brush and I will be sweeping up glass or sick all the time. It’s definitely art, but I wouldn’t actually worry if you called it vandalism.”

To view more of Ben Wilson’s chewing gum art, click here

For more information on Ben Wilson, see here

Jodhpurs Nr. 34 by three African girls in vintage jodhpurs, date unknown (note the perfect tailoring around the knee of the girl on the right)

It is estimated that on average an English-speaking person uses 2,000 words a week; to read The Sun newspaper you only have to be able to know 500 words. However, the most common 500 English words have 14,000 different meanings.

Apply this to the French language whose total number of dictionary entries is a lot less than its English equivalent and you realise that it takes between 800-1000 of those poetic pearls to sustain yourself, continue to have a minimum of social contact and basically survive.

Beyond that magic number you have enough ammunition left to curse or sing of love, cover someone in promises so soft they never want to strip them off, or attack them like swashbuckling Erroll Flynn who takes a piece out of your soul that will under no circumstances ever grow back.

The adult immigrant learns to abide on these meagre but sufficient tools and finds it much easier to stay true to his word since there are so few of them that he truly masters.

His children rely on him completely in those first moments after arrival; it is the adult immigrant who will make their first friends for them.

Then after a few weeks – approximately six on average – the coin flips, spinning in mid-air and the apprentice becomes the master. And before long not only will the children speak the language, but they will also master colloquialisms, asides and sub-text. They will understand the subtle difference between a tease, an insult and hidden racism.

While you still operate in single digit number of words understood to fit together the meaning of the conversation, your children have already formed an opinion on the subject and the person talking.

If you prefer your children submissive and like to control them, don’t embark on this particular adventure; your move has just given them wings you will never grow yourself.

If you live your own life through your children’s achievements, by all means brag about their newfound skills. Just don’t stand too close to all the other arrivistes whose children have mastered the same skills. They know the truth: it’s no big deal.

Stick to showing off back home where no one knows the difference. Children are sponges and will soak up any language you throw them into. They won’t sink; just swim off elegantly in beautiful butterfly strokes whistling the latest native pop tune.

If you want to move away to a new life in a new culture, be aware that you are handing your children a different type of freedom that might well have the power to separate you permanently. Because you will be the immigrant that you might smile about right now in your own home country, the one that muddles up the tenses and never quite gets to grips with “me” and “mine”.

Language-wise at least, you will be no different to the refugee that is cleaning the road in front of your house.

Contrary to what we all might think, a dictionary is not the most important tool when learn a new language. What is really needed are humility, a sense of humour, an open mind and guts.

If all those items have been carefully wrapped in tissue paper and stacked in the removal boxes with care, then you are ready to leave.

*related posts: Enriched by Mistranslation

For those that missed the pre-Christmas release of this book, a little reminder that this collection of bittersweet memories of the good old days of taperecorders and pirate copying from the radio is now out.

Side A

Jason Bitner: Author of FOUND fame

The Full Amount: Sixty Stories

Contents and Theme: Loves, Dreams & Grownin’ UP (‘somewhere along the line’)

Contents and Theme: Personal Memoir (‘a cost-effective way to create a memory everyone can relate to’)

No Drawbacks: The iPod Generation (…has no way of knowing)

No Drawbacks: Reprise – The iPod Generation (…playlists are not the same)

No Drawbacks: Magnet Power Rules

Side B

Be a Copycat: You have got 2 (…make your own now)

To Whom It May Concern: Send it in the Post

Coffee and a Break: Checkin’ Out the Ole Tapes

The Extras: Online Playlists for Each Story

The Verdicts: Either Like it or Not

Click Here: 2 add your own story & songs

Jodhpurs Photograph Nr. 33 taken in Washington, D.C. in  January 1922