Culture

In 1960, writing a postcard to her friend and mentor Marvin Israel, Diane Arbus (1923–71) worried that she was ghoulish. From an early age her photographs had recorded the marginalised and dispossessed, capturing the imperfections and frailties of humanity. She was a woman with a mission — scrutinising society and chronicling the damaged or eccentric, what she called ‘singular people’. She made square-format photographs of a startling clarity, but, despite her technical brilliance, her vision was dark and bleak. It comes as no surprise to learn that she suffered acutely from the devils of depression and that she committed suicide. The great empathy which informs her image-making in the end got too much for her.

I suppose if I had to name my favourite children’s author it would have to be Richmal Crompton and the William stories, followed not far behind by Anthony Buckeridge and Jennings, and Enid Blyton with the adventures of the famous five. There are numerous others, of course, but I enjoyed reading these three the most when I was a child. Buckeridge, who died last year at the age of 92, was the subject of The Archive Hour: Fossilised Fish Hooks! Jennings at the BBC on Radio Four (Saturday), an affectionate tribute as well as an exploration of Buckeridge’s influence on radio comedy.

The Modern Movement in architecture had scarcely succeeded in abolishing ornament before people began to speculate about how and when it would return. In Britain, the historian Sir John Summerson, as a young journalist, found it hard to believe that architecture would be able to communicate without it beyond the initial period of purification which he and many others believed was a necessary transitional phase.

Stiletto heels, a baby’s dummy, Spice Girls ephemera and glittering embroidery — the predictable paraphernalia of womanhood is all on show in What Women Want. But the latest exhibition at the enterprising Women’s Library in the East End of London is underpinned by some surprising revelations. So we have a 1972 edition of Spare Rib magazine (which I had thought always prided itself on being a feminist alternative to Good House-keeping) advertising an article by ‘Georgie Best’ on sex. Another case of books, diaries and postcards contains Married Love by Marie Stopes, opened at the title page to reveal that it was first published in 1918 and that it was subtitled ‘A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties’.

Nowadays ‘Kienholz’ is a brand. Its founder, Edward Kienholz (1927–94), was a self-taught artist who grew up on a farm on the borders of Washington and Idaho. He made a living as an odd-job man and drove a truck stencilled ‘Ed Kienholz Expert, Estab. 1952’, before co-founding a commercial art gallery and establishing a reputation as an artist of nightmarish surrealistic installations, using real furniture and life-size figures. In 1972 he met and married Nancy Reddin (born 1943), and in 1981 he issued a statement that all works from 1972 onwards were co-authored by him and Nancy.

It was a story straight out of the Arabian Nights. Two immense temples are lifted high into the air, and transported to a remote desert site. At the same time an entire hill is created in order to replicate the original setting. Such, essentially, is the story of Abu Simbel. The twin temples of Abu Simbel, built by Rameses the Great, one dedicated to himself as a god, the other to his delectable wife-daughter Nefetari, were carved out of the living rock at a bend in the Nile. Rameses lived to be almost 100 and spent a considerable part of his long life building temples and statues to himself.