URBAN PLAY

Art as Regenerative Force

By

Ekaterina Belyaeva

Master of Letters

College of Arts

University of Glasgow

Christie’s Education

London

Modern and Contemporary Art

September 2013

© Ekaterina Belyaeva

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Acknowledgements

This work would not have been possible without the encouragement, advice and support of

those who were always willing to assist. For all those I am referring to I owe my gratitude.

In particular, however, I wish to thank my tutor Dr Catherine James for her endless support

and generosity in sharing her knowledge and time.

I furthermore wish to extend my gratitude to the entire staff of Christie’s Education, London

for creating the atmosphere of freedom and creativity so unique to Christie’s, and especially

so the course director Ms Lizzie Perrotte for her professional leadership, support and

guidance, Mr Mike Ricketts for his indispensable assistance and bibliographical suggestions,

and Mr John Slyce for his keen commitment to instil in us the all-important critical approach

to learning, analysis and research.

Finally, I owe a special gratitude to my mother Dr Liudmila Osmolovskaya for a lifetime’s

encouragement and support.

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Abstract

Globally, cities have sprung up and grown into ever-expanding melting pots of peoples,

cultures, practices, ideas, knowledge, technology and social challenges. The city is by its very

nature a constantly evolving environment where different cultures interact in expressing

themselves, where the inhabitants’ values and ways of life define their expectations, needs,

and demands. Ideas about art and urban space, and the interaction between the two has been

the subject of considerable research. Art lives in dialogue with and contributes to changing

urban environments. It also lives in dialogue with public spaces and society at large. Play as

an activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation is an inherited part of contemporary

urban society. For both adult-play and child-play, the urban environment creates both

limitations and opportunities for ‘irrational’ behaviour and unplanned random interactions.

Play can happen anywhere, the place and time is unpredictable. It is also a characteristic

which is present in many different kinds of human behavior.

URBAN PLAY: Art as Regenerative Force will attempt to illustrate the role of ‘play’ in the city

environment and the possible value of ‘urban play’ in art as a regenerating force. In doing

so, it will place reliance on a number of notable artists whose work, as different from that of

each other as it may be, focused on urban wastelands and transitional spaces. These were

artists who, each in their own way, reacted to the many struggles inside those urban spaces

and observed everyday urban life, used cities as a creative forum, and sensed or even inspired

changes in society or architectural thinking. With very different artistic practices and using

different media, they captured and recorded everyday life in the urban environment, the

social challenges often associated with urbanized populations, changes in how societies

organize themselves, and the failures and opportunities that so often go unnoticed during

times of transition. In following these artists, URBAN PLAY will take the viewer to those

cities where their creativity found expression, from the disadvantaged 1930’s Bolton, to the

1950’s post-war London, and ultimately to the 1970’s New York City.

Word count: 17 291

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................... 2

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... 3

List of Exhibited Works ................................................................................................................... 5

List of Comparative Illustrations..................................................................................................... 6

URBAN PLAY: Art as Regenerative Force .................................................................................. 8

Comparative Illustrations ............................................................................................................... 44

Catalogue........................................................................................................................................... 58

Glossary ............................................................................................................................................ 97

Appendix 1. Venue .......................................................................................................................... 98

Appendix 2. The Right of Children to Play ................................................................................. 99

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................... 102

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List of Exhibited Works

1. Humphrey Spender, Children in the Rubble, Tyneside, 1938 ...................................................... 59

2. Humphrey Spender, Children’s Slide in Queen Park, 1937-8 .................................................... 62

3. Humphrey Spender, Street life - children playing, 1937 ............................................................... 64

4. Nigel Henderson, Peter Samuels, 1951 ....................................................................................... 67

5. Nigel Henderson, Bag-wash, 1949-53 ........................................................................................ 70

6. Nigel Henderson, Untitled No. 8 (Shattered Glass), 1959 .......................................................... 72

7. Nigel Henderson, Head of a Man, 1956 ..................................................................................... 74

8. Alison and Peter Smithson, Grille pour le C.I.A.M. d’Aix-en-Provence, 1952-53 .................... 77

9. Roger Mayne, Goalie, Brindley Road, off Harrow Road, 1956 ..................................................... 81

10. Gordon Matta-Clark, Realty Properties: Fake Estates – “Jamaica Curb,” Block 10142, Lot 15,

c1974.................................................................................................................................................. 83

11. Gordon Matta-Clark, Realty Properties: Fake Estates – “Maspeth Onions,” Block 2406, Lot

148, c1973 ......................................................................................................................................... 86

12. Trisha Brown, filmed by Babette Mangolte, Roof Piece, 1973 .............................................. 88

13. Martha Rosler, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, 1974-75 ................................ 92

14. Steve McQueen, Drumroll, 1998 .............................................................................................. 95

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List of Comparative Illustrations

Plate 1. Walker Evans, Subway Portrait, 1938-41 .......................................................................... 48

Plate 2. Humphrey Spender, Woman Cleaning Pavement, 1937 .................................................... 48

Plate 3. Humphrey Spender, Catapult Kids, 1937 ......................................................................... 48

Plate 4. Humphrey Spender, Washing on the Lines, 1937 ............................................................. 48

Plate 5. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Juvisy, France, 1938 ..................................................................... 49

Plate 6. Henri Cartier-Bresson, During the Visit of George VI of England to Versailles, 1938..... 49

Plate 7. Nigel Henderson, Stressed Photograph, c.1950 .................................................................. 49

Plate 8. Nigel Henderson, Collage, 1949 ........................................................................................ 49

Plate 9. Nigel Henderson, Untitled (No.50), c. 1956 .................................................................... 50

Plate 10. Nigel Henderson, Shop front, 1949-53 ........................................................................... 50

Plate 11. Nigel Henderson, Distressed door, 1949-53 .................................................................... 50

Plate 12. Nigel Henderson, Peter Samuels, 1951 ........................................................................... 50

Plate 13. Nigel Henderson, Gillian Alixander Skipping, Chisenhale Road, 1951.......................... 51

Plate 14. Nigel Henderson, Chisenhale Road, 1951 ....................................................................... 51

Plate 15. Nigel Henderson, Chisenhale Road, 1951 ....................................................................... 51

Plate 16. Nigel Henderson, Chisenhale Road, 1951 ....................................................................... 51

Plate 17. Bidonville Mahieddine Grid, 1953, CIAM-Alger .............................................................. 52

Plate 18. Parallel of Life and Art, 1953 ............................................................................................ 52

Plate 19. From This is tomorrow exhibition catalogue, 1956 ........................................................ 52

Plate 20. Richard Hamilton, Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So

Appealing?, 1956 ................................................................................................................................ 53

Plate 21. Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi and Alison and Peter Smithson, Patio and

Pavilion, 1956 ..................................................................................................................................... 53

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Plate 22. Roger Mayne, Street Cricket, Clarendon Crescent, 1957 ................................................... 53

Plate 23. Roger Mayne, Southam Street, London, 1957 .................................................................. 53

Plate 24. Boy on a Bombsite, Waverley Walk, Harrow Road area, 1957 ........................................... 54

Plate 25. Documerica project. Danny Lyon, Support the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, New York,

1974 ................................................................................................................................................... 54

Plate 26. Documerica project. Dan McCoy, Traffic congestion in Midtown Manhattan, 1973 ......... 54

Plate 27. Roger Myers, The Wall, 1973 .......................................................................................... 54

Plate 28. George Maciunas and Takako Saito, Flux-Treadmill, 1973 ........................................ 55

Plate 29. Richard Hayman, Bellroll, 1975 ...................................................................................... 55

Plate 30. Vito Acconci, Following Piece, 1969 ................................................................................ 55

Plate 31. Daniel Buren, Seven Ballets in Manhattan, 1975 ............................................................. 55

Plate 32. Hans Haaske, Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1,

1971 ................................................................................................................................................... 56

Plate 33. Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974 .............................................................................. 56

Plate 34. Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975 .................................................................. 56

Plate 35. Trisha Brown, Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, 1970 .................................... 56

Plate 36. Trisha Brown, Women Walking Down a Ladder, 1973 .................................................. 57

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URBAN PLAY: Art as Regenerative Force

Ideas about art and urban space, and the interaction between the two has been the subject

of considerable research. The historic ability of some cities to develop modern art and design,

coupled with the blend of art, architecture and society in some well-organized and

economically competitive urban areas has always been a subject of interest. There are various

driving forces behind the growth or change in the artistic landscape that may influence urban

spaces. Artistic and architectural movements and schools of thought, influential thinkers,

politicians and their policies, social trends, evolving popular culture, and social projects come

to mind. Whatever those forces may be, artists of various subject-fields of the arts have long

been not only contributors to urban development and regeneration; they often drive it,

knowingly or unknowingly, directly or indirectly. Amongst these different groups, there are

photographers, painters, designers, sculptors, architects and city planners to name but a few.

There have certainly been artists who inadvertently contributed a body of work that created

awareness amongst the public of certain challenges or opportunities, artists whose work

started a new trend or school of thought, or those who expended their energy with urban

development or regeneration as their focus or interest.

Globally, cities have sprung up and grown into melting pots of ideas, practices and peoples.

Their very nature and purpose drew people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, professions

and interests, together into very confined living spaces. Cities are an environment where

different cultures interact in expressing themselves, where the inhabitants’ values and ways

of life define their needs, cultural demands, and expectations in terms of public services. It

is an environment characterized by constant first-time exposure for its inhabitants to new

cultures, ideas, practices and challenges.

There are many theories and definitions of the ‘city’ in literature, some of which also resonate

with the author. Nick Barley in his Breathing Cities has described contemporary cities as living

creatures where flows of people, streams of consumer goods and waste, urban fauna, planet

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life and weather complete the architectural environment.1 Victor Burgin refers to the ‘city’ as

an individual with human character. He has been quoted as having said: “Our relations with

cities are like our relations with people. We love them, hate them, or are indifferent toward

them. On our first day in a city that is new to us, we go looking for the city. We go down the

street, around that corner. We are aware of the faces of passers-by. But the city eludes us,

and we become uncertain whether we are looking for a city, or for a person.”2

The available space in any city is made up of public and private space. Interaction and

exposure to new people and ideas is something one can expect to be more likely in public

spaces rather than in private spaces not open to the general public. Public spaces therefore

play an important role in everyday society; they are an important setting for informal social

interaction.

Social, economic, and political change profoundly shape people, impact on their lives, and

alter their social needs. This then is also why cities evolve. They change demographically,

culturally, in influence, in prosperity, and in the way they are organized. Modern cities in the

era of industrialisation were designed as functional spaces with city planning and urban

aesthetics being subject to the ideas of reason, order, and rational organisation of space.

Industrial innovation and technological advances allowed for the development of urban

transportation links, provided business and employment opportunities, and drove

urbanization and migration. Modern planning principles stressed zoning and segregation of

1 In the introduction Barley divides the components of a city into several categories: the architecture of the city;

the flow of people (commuters, shoppers, tourists, homeless people) moving around the city; everything that

those people consume (food, drink, clothes, flows of goods) together with waste of the consumption (human

and animal excrement, litter, household rubbish, industrial effluents); the fauna and geology of the land (rats,

pigeons, cats, insects that inhabit the metropolis); plant life together with rivers, earthquakes, smog, and every

kind of weather condition. Nick Barley, ed., Breathing Cities: The Architecture of Movement (Basel: Birkha user;

London: August, c2000), p. 5

2 Victor Burgin, Some Cites (London: Reaktion, 1996), p. 7. In this autobiographical book, Burgin recalls cities

where he lived or visited. In this work is also to be found many of his photographs with accompanying

comments and stories, capturing street life in cities like Sheffield, London, Coventry, Paris, New York, Los

Angeles, Berlin, Lyon, Grenoble, Warsaw, Gdansk, Lodz, Malmo, Perth, Tokyo, Singapore, Blois, Marseille,

San Francisco, Las Vegas, Grenoble, Tobago, Orleans, etc.

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like functions and activities into different districts and areas, functional buildings with equally

functional but less aesthetics exteriors.

Criticism of the modern city relates to many cities having been laid out, built, organized and

administered with no space for ‘irrational’ behaviour and unplanned random interactions that

add so much to city life. The urban reality of modernity has not been one that catered for

the inhabitants, but for capitalist speculators, business requirements, production and

efficiency. Modern cities frame opportunities for play, but do not actively encourage it. Like

the frame of a painting limiting the canvas, cities set limits, both architectural and physical.

Play can be seen as an activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious

or practical purpose. As early as in 1938, the human instinct to play and play-acting in modern

western society was a topic that Johan Huizinga, a reputed Dutch cultural historian, discussed

in his work titled Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture.3 For Huizinga play was

something embodied in culture. It is something he characterized as a voluntary activity

directly opposite to seriousness, as activity that is not ‘ordinary’, but well removed from ‘real’

life. He argued it to be an activity not aimed at material interest, but as an activity aimed for

fun.4 Huizinga’s play is something freely engaged in and something that is an expression of

one’s freedom from the everyday.

The idea of play in an urban setting may go back to Baudelaire’s flâneur – an urban walker, a

person who walks the city in order to experience it, to observe the city, to walk for walking’s

sake and lose himself in the labyrinth of streets.5 The street becomes a dwelling for this urban

walker who totally immerses himself in the environment, and at the same time attempts to

3 Huizinga sees play as something that is instinctive, a quality that exists and is expressed independently from

culture stating that: “Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes

human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.” Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens:

A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (London: Poutledge & Kegal Paul, 1980), written in 1938, originally

published in 1944, p. 1

4 Huizinga, Homo Ludens, pp. 8-10

5 Walter Benjamin in his discussion of Baudelaire’s work develops an idea that flâneur’s purposeless walks directly

contradicted capitalism’s cult of industriousness. Walter Benjamin, “The flâneur”, Charles Baudelaire: a Lyric Poet in

the Era of High Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1973), p. 54

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interpret the city as a set of signs to be decoded. Play can happen anywhere, the place and

time is unpredictable. For Quentin Stevens, play is “a characteristic which is present to

varying degrees in many different kinds of human behavior.”6 Play can be seen as irrational,

purposeless behavior opposite to serious, expected, pragmatic and predictable behaviour.

Play is more than just fun. It is a spontaneous and creative activity that gives an illusion of

escape from the ‘everyday’. Play is an informal social interaction, it is not serious, but it has

to be taken seriously by the “players”.

Children enjoy playing. This is a need, and it is quite possibly the default mode for most

young children. The understanding of children’s play has historically been viewed as

something very different or contrary to that of playful adult behavior. It will be safe to assume

that children experience urban environments differently than would most adults. For

children, roaming around, discovering new things and places, and learning as they go along,

instils confidence and independence. Roaming around a city and playing in the streets is no

different from that of the child living in the countryside venturing over the next set of hills

or crossing another stream. It is places where they learn and grow. Playing may be at the

centre of their experience of the world, but it plays an important role in the development of

their cognitive and social skills, prerequisites for learning and mastering more complex skills

as they grow up. Walter Benjamin saw children as having a special, distinctive relationship

with the spaces and objects they encounter in their urban environment. For him, their

perceptions and playful activities are marked by a distinctive, intimate connection to, and

immersion in the world that surrounds them.7 Children at play today are the generation

shaping the play of tomorrow. Children’s experiences of ‘play’ have a formative effect or the

way their personalities, views, priorities, and interests develop later into maturity. For this

reason then, the way children play may have an impact on the way they will play as adults,

6 Quentin Stevens, The Ludic City: Exploring the potential of public space (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 26

7 See more details in Graeme Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City (Cambridge: Polity Press,

1996), p. 83

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the same adults that will be driving the projects, urban regeneration programs or shaping of

the environment of tomorrow.8

Whereas children continue to play in whatever urban environment in which they find

themselves, it is the adults who ‘play’ with the urban environment. Those who conceptualize,

plan, initiate, authorize, finance and execute urban regeneration will always be adults. It is

the adults who initiate urban projects based on their views of the perceived needs of specific

communities or groups. Childhood play in urban environments and in city-streets in the era

of considerable urban development inspires architects, but overall the development of cities

still and always will follow the needs of adults first.

There has been a limited focus in literature on the non-functional role of cities, the playful

use of urban space, and urbis as a substance that encourages play. There has however long

been an awareness of the potential for cities to be more than just functional units. For many

scholars the post-modern city is a city of greater flexibility than the modern city, the latter

very much being viewed as representative of ‘bubble planning’ with separate spaces specially

set aside and designed for play. Post-industrial society is calling for cities to be places

embodying a built-in play factor. Henri Lefebvre, recognized as one of the most prominent

French thinkers of the twentieth century who gave considerable thought to current urban

theory, in his work titled The Production of Space argued the idea of space being a social product

affecting spatial practices and perceptions rather than being a mere architectural product.

Lefebvre has been quoted as once saying: “The city must be a place of waste, for one wastes

space and time; everything must not be foreseen and functional […] the most beautiful cities

were those where festivals were not planned in advance, but where there was a space where

they could unfold”.9

8 Play as human behaviour is however not only something of interest to students of the arts, architecture,

education, sociology and psychology. It is human behaviour that has entered the economic and political

domains. See Appendix 2 for more details.

9 Quoted by Stevens in The Ludic City, unnumbered preface

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Art lives in dialogue with the changing urban environment and contributes to a changing

environment. It also lives in dialogue with public spaces and social issues. Rosalyn Deutsche,

an art historian and critic who has written extensively and lectured internationally on

interdisciplinary topics such as art and urbanism and art and the public sphere, has in the

past recognized this interplay. She noted that there was significant growth in urban

development in New York in the 1980s which as she saw it coincided with the intensification

of official rhetoric about new public spaces, an increasing interest in the aesthetic of urban

planning and public art.10 Artists of all walks of life are a major contributor and driver of the

post-modern landscape. They are in a position to use their skills at informing, convincing

and organizing to shape the post-modern city’s landscape and functionality. Architecture is

commonly appreciated to be only one of the shaping factors in the urban environment. It is

however one of, if not the most significant one. It shapes the urban landscape, determines

its functionality, and its contribution will usually be lasting and visible. Walter Benjamin was

once quoted as having said that: “Architecture has never been idle. Its history is more ancient

than that of any other art, and its claim to being a living force has significance in every attempt

to comprehend the relationship of the masses to art”.11 For Benjamin, architecture is

“appropriated” not only visually, but through all our senses. For him, the city is not only

experienced when we see comfortable places, but also when we see and recognize

uncomfortable places. Architecture stands central to the development of the socially

functioning city catering to a functional and social balance. It is architects, more so than any

other group of artists who can shape post-modern cities into more hybrid socially

functioning cities accommodating public spaces for urban play.

Pat Kane, a reputed consultant promoting the power and potential of play, argues that the

role of artists in societies “where play values, rather than work values, become dominant” is

to keep the society in play.12 Play reveals the struggles inside urban spaces, it revitalises urban

10 Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press, c1996), p. xiii

11 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, transl. by J. A. Underwood (London:

Penguin, 2008), first published in 1936, p. 240

12 Pat Kane, The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living (London: Macmillan, 2004), pp. 223, 225

14

gaps and reveals the potential for regeneration. Play heightens awareness of the city using its

wastelands and buildings to reflect on the evolution of the urbis itself and the elements that

comprise it. In our postmodern society, playfulness and irony became hallmark of the artists’

style. Some serious subjects are treated whimsically from a position of distance and

disconnect. Elements of previous styles are combined, pasted, and playfully appropriated.13

In the post-industrial economy where the service sector generates more wealth than the

manufacturing sector, knowledge becomes a creative instrument with creativity and

innovation becoming cult. Where there is a playful spirit between competitors, business itself

can take on a more playful character. Play-centered postmodern society emphasizes pastiche,

parody and irony. Walter Benjamin’s playfulness and dreaming is “part enchantment, part

disenchantment, of the adult world.”14

URBAN PLAY: Art as Regenerative Force takes the viewer to a number of the world’s ‘art

capitals’ and other important cities, with emphasis on London and New York. It presents a

number of notable artists whose work, as very different from that of each other as it may be,

focused on urban wastelands and transitional spaces. These were artists who, each in their

own way, reacted to the many struggles inside those urban spaces and observed everyday

urban life, used cities as a creative forum, and sensed or even inspired changes in society or

architectural thinking.

Most of the participating works have previously been exhibited in different contexts as part

of shows presented at premier venues like Tate, Barbican and Whitechapel Galleries. Century

City, one of the most prominent exhibitions offered by Tate in 2001, explored the

relationship between cultural creativity and the metropolis. It focused on nine cities from

around the world where at some point over the previous century those cities came to the

fore as centres for artistic innovation.15 The more recent Barbican show of Laurie Anderson,

13 The root origin of the word ‘pasted’ can be traced to pastiche

14 Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis, p. 92

15 The exhibition explored Paris in 1905 – 1915, Vienna in 1908 – 1918, Moscow in 1916 – 1930, Lagos in 1955

– 1970, Rio de Janeiro in 1955 – 1969, Tokyo in 1969 – 1973, New York in 1969 – 1974, Bombay in 1992 –

15

Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s presented the

work of these artists, all recognized and highly regarded for their pioneering work in the

1970’s New York art scene, with a focus on the intersections between their practices.16 The

Whitechapel show of 2010 reconstructed the 1956 exhibition This is Tomorrow featuring Nigel

Henderson and Alison and Peter Smithson who contributed to the 1956 exhibition with their

Patio and Pavilion section. Patio and Pavilion addressed what was at the time argued to be a

problem of a lack of connection between architecture and the inhabitants. This is Tomorrow

has been argued to become an exhibition that was later accepted as the beginning of a new

spirit of British art and the whole installation concept.17 The Photographers’ Gallery in 2013

opened an exhibition titled Mass Observation: This is Your Photo. The exhibition explored the

role of photography in the Mass Observation as a document of everyday life, and, in fact, also

encouraged public participation in the observation.18

URBAN PLAY: Art as Regenerative Force will attempt to illustrate the role of ‘play’ in the city

environment and the possible value of ‘urban play’ in art as a regenerating force. In this work

reliance will be placed on a number of notable artists who, using different ways and media,

captured and recorded everyday life in the urban environment, the social challenges often

associated with urbanized populations, changes in how societies organize themselves, and

the failures and opportunities that so often go unnoticed during times of transition.

The work of photographers like Humphrey Spender, Nigel Henderson and Roger Mayne

added more than just a body of images, but contributed to an understanding of the workings,

shortcomings, challenges and unrealized opportunities prevalent in the cities and

2001, London in 1990 – 2001. New York in the beginning of the 1970s was presented as a subject matter with

the works of Gordon Matta-Clark’s ‘alternative’ architectural language. It was presented together with ‘specially

female’ art by Hannah Wilke, Lynda Benglis’s ideas of femininity, Vito Acconci’s Following Piece. See exhibition

catalogue Iwona Blazwick, Century City: art and culture in the modern metropolis (London: Tate Publishing, c2001)

16 See exhibition catalogue: Lydia Yee, Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark: Poineers of the Downtown

Scene New York 1970s (Munich: Prestel in association with the Barbican Art Gallery, 2011)

17 See exhibition catalogue: Nayia Yiakoumaki, curator, Iwona Blazwick and Nayia Yiakoumaki, preface, This is

tomorrow (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2010), originally published in 1956

18 Mass Observation: This is Your Photo, Photographers’ Gallery, 2 August - 29 September 2013, Exhibition page,

accessed 24 Aug 2013: <http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/mass-observation-2>

16

communities in which they immersed themselves. Humphrey Spender’s documentary

photography recorded the everyday life of the working-class population of Bolton. His body

of work is today recognised as an important part of the Mass Observation, a project in operation

at a time of widespread social and political discord in pre-war Britain. Nigel Henderson’s

work stands out in that it inspired and complimented that of other artists, the latter notable

for their own contributions. During the transitional period of recovery following WW II, a

time of increasing debate around Britain’s urban environment and architecture, it was

Henderson’s photographs of children playing in the streets of Bethnal Green that inspired

architects Alison and Peter Smithson and contributed to their views on urban planning with

a focus on the street as an extension of the house. Roger Mayne’s shots of disadvantaged

children in post-war London portrayed the street as the arena for people’s lives. Mayne’s

name has since grown synonymous with street photography.

New York City in the 1970s represented different things for different observers. For some

it was a city in decline, but for many artists it provided an arena for their art. It was a place

that offered opportunity for artistic expression, a place that was fertile ground for

experimentation with their urban and playful performative practices. SoHo in particular

witnessed considerable artistic growth, became an open stage for experiments, and offered a

peculiar blend which made it a popular focal point for artists like Martha Rosler with her

recordings of the street-life of the homeless, and Gordon Matta-Clark and Trisha Brown

who played with the city and used it in their performances.

Observations of everyday life as captured and recorded in photography have grown beyond

just being a hobby of a select and knowledgeable few. It has for all practical purposes become

engrained in modern life with cameras now available and being used by millions of people

capturing their lives and that of others with photographs being published on a wide range of

platforms and social networking websites such as Facebook and Instagram.

17

There is a renewed interest in the Mass Observation project and the work it engaged in. On

2 August 2013, the Photographers’ Gallery opened an exhibition titled Mass Observation: This

is Your Photo. It is an exhibition the curator described as an exploration of the role of

photography in the project as a document of everyday life. As part of the preparation for the

exhibition, the Gallery commissioned a project titled Photography and You, an initiative

intended to get the public “to respond to and participate in a series of gallery directives.”19

Public responses to the Mass Observation are also exhibited in the Gallery.20 Another

contemporary project built on the Mass Observation saw the involvement of those people

associated with Bolton who contributed editorially or as commentators in complimenting

the visual record of Bolton as captured and recorded by Humphrey Spender. This amongst

others made possible the compilation of an interactive map showing the locations where

individual photographs were taken with links to the photographs of Spender.21

Mass Observation can trace its roots back to 1930’s Bolton, a then working class industrial

town in the north east of England.22 The project was embedded in a time characterized by

19 Mass Observation: This is Your Photo, Exhibition webpage

20 Refer <www.flickr.com/groups/thisisyourphoto>, accessed 28 August 2013

21 Bolton Worktown, Photography and Archives from the Mass Observation, accessed 25 Aug 2013:

<boltonworktown.co.uk>

22 Mass Observation started out as an ambitious project founded in 1937 by the anthropologist and ornithologist

Tom Harrisson, the poet and journalist Charles Madge, and the surrealist painter and film-maker Humphrey

Jennings. They were a small group of like-minded friends who shared an interest in the interrelationships

between art, sociology, and anthropology in addition to an interest in the study of anthropology in Britain. In

1937 Harrison published a poem of his in the New Statesman. Coincidently, the poem appeared on the same

page as a letter posted by Madge and Jennings wherein they summarised their project to encourage volunteers

in London to reply to regular questionnaires on a variety of matters. Harrison, who was himself interested in

the anthropological study of the British and was already immersed in his study in Bolton, contacted Madge and

Jennings. Within a month, the two projects joined together under the title of Mass Observation with the aim

to create an “anthropology of ourselves” – a study of the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. Their

shared sentiments, that may arguably also be their underlying motivation for the project’s founding, can possibly

be gleaned from a 1937 pamphlet which outlined the Mass-Observation’s project and wherein Harrison and

Madge were quoted as having stated that: “How little we know of our next door neighbour and his habits; how

little we know of ourselves. Of conditions of life and thought in another class or another district, our ignorance

is complete. The anthropology of ourselves is still only a dream”. Quoted by Rod Varley in Mass Observation

1937-1987 (Brentford: Watermans, 1987), published on the occasion of an exhibition at Bolton Museum and

Art Gallery, p. 9, and by Deborah Frizzell in Humphrey Spender’s Humanist Landscapes, Photo-Documents, 1932-1942

(New Haven: Herlin Press Inc., 1997), p. 24. See also the Mass Observation archive for more details, last accessed

25 Aug 2013: <http://www.massobs.org.uk/original_massobservation_project.htm>.

18

widespread social and political discord. Pre-war Britain had seen considerable social unrest,

poverty was rife due to the affects of the great depression, the underclass felt they were being

ignored, and there was the Royal abdication crisis to name but a few of the then current

events. Starting out as an ambitious project for its time, Tom Harrisson, Charles Madge,

Humphrey Jennings and the observers set out to document and record British culture and

society. The intended objective of the initiative was to create an information platform as a

measure to counteract many of the stereotypes of the time that still held sway in the British

media.23 They initially focused their study on Bolton – a town in the greater Manchester area

in the Northwest of England. The study was titled The Worktown Project. It was followed by

launching another study in Blackpool titled The Leisuretown Project. Harrisson and a team of

observers reportedly continued their study of life and people in Bolton (the Worktown Project),

with Madge having remained in London to organise the writing of the volunteer panel.

Observers were selected from both the scientific and non-scientific community. A team of

British scientific experts and writers grouped into what was called the The National Panel of

Diarists were to keep diaries and interpreted information as received from the Mass Observation

project’s central team. Another group of experts and artists were to identify the population’s

basic artistic needs coupled with the development of programmes that could satisfy those

needs. In addition, the project’s compliment of observers was augmented by a team of those

who were not scientifically trained but were to observe, photograph, and make notes on the

lives of people.24 The debates around the contradiction of objectivity (the ability of a camera

to capture objects and the presumed ability of anyone to read and reach the same conclusion

23 Tom Harrisson, one of the co-founders of the Mass Observation project, described Bolton, Lancashire, as a

typical working-class and industrial work-place like many others encountered throughout Britain. Tom

Harrison, Britain Revisited (London: Victor Gollancz, 1961), p. 25. David Mellor, University of Sussex art

historian, quotes statistical data from a Bolton’s officer’s report forwarded to the Central Office of Information.

Bolton in 1937 had a population of 170 000 people that was decreasing at the rate of on average 1 000 per year.

The unemployment rate was 11 %, compared to 6 % in London, and the death rate was on average 25 % higher

than the national average, tuberculosis associated with the cotton industry being a suspected contributing factor.

See David Mellor, Humphrey Spender’s Worktown Photographs of Bolton and Blackpool Taken for Mass-Observation, 1937-

1938 (Gardner Art Centre, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, 1977), p. 16

24 Deborah Frizzell makes reference to an estimated 400 observers during 1937, a number which rapidly grew

to up to 3 000 volunteer observers in the 1940s). Frizzell, p. 29

19

upon any photograph) and subjectivity of photography were not fully developed yet, with

misconceptions of photographs being ‘evidence’ for ‘objective truth’ being common.

Influenced by Surrealism, members of Mass Observation attempted to access and account

for the unconscious as it was expressed in the everyday lives of the inhabitants.25 They were

required to record the lifestyles of ordinary people in as much detail as possible, a task which

entailed a great degree of submergence into the full spectrum of social and public situations

i.e. meetings, religious occasions, sporting events, leisure activities, and mixing on the street

and at work. Children at play were also of interest.

Humphrey Spender is recognized by many scholars as one of the early pioneers of what is

today generally referred to as documentary photography.26 Spender joined the Mass

Observation project in Bolton in 1937; most of his photographs were taken during his multiple

trips to Bolton over the period 1937-1938. As a member of the project, he took photographs

capturing the lives of the 1930’s working-classes, photographs the artistic significance of

which and its prominent place in the history of the social documentary was in fact only

appreciated in the 1970’s. It must, however, be said that Spender’s photographs were never

intended as art, but were in fact taken with the view of them being used as records and

25 The exhibition Subversive Spaces: Surrealism + Contemporary Art in Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester in 2009

attempted to analyse the connection between Surrealism and disordered spaces in the cities. See exhibition

catalogue for more information: Maria Balshaw, Samantha Lackey, David Lomas, Anna Dezeuze, Subversive

Spaces: Surrealism + Contemporary Art (Manchester: Whitworth Art Gallery, 2009), Exhibition catalogue

26 Spender studied art history and German at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau (1927-28) and architecture

at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London (1929-1933). Although Spender qualified as

an architect, he decided on a career in photography. He first started experimenting with photography whilst

studying at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. Spender frequently spent time in

Germany. It is doubtful that the New Vision photography with its focus on the formal qualities of the image

over its context and the use of the advanced technology to expand the borders of human vision that he would

have encountered there, is something Spender would have overlooked. Deborah Frizzell in her analysis of the

aesthetic, critical and art-historical importance of Spender’s work within the genesis of British photojournalism

notes the influence of the aesthetic of New Objectivity – a new painting philosophy which emphasized the

rendering of concrete reality as opposed to a romantic, impressionist or symbolist approach – on the reportorial

approach to documentary photography of British artists at the time when Spender started his photographic

career (see Frizzell, p. 11). The impact these influences might have had on Spender’s own technique is debatable

but not to be waived as improbable. Initially setting up a studio in London, Spender in 1935 took up a position

as a photographer for the Daily Mail. It is at or around this time that his work was noticed by the Mass Observation

team.

20

sources of information in support of the intended objectives of the Mass Observation project

as they were at that time. His photographs are nevertheless today recognised as an important

part of the Mass Observation archive.

The Mass Observation observers placed heavy reliance on the objective observation of people,

avoiding interaction. Not surprisingly, there were some who viewed the observers with

suspicion, with participants often deemed as spies and snoopers. Spender was concerned

that the presence of a camera would influence the way people behaved, sometimes

concealing his camera in his coat or taking snapshots with his camera resting on a table.

Similarly, Walker Evans between the years 1938-1941 photographed commuters on the New

York subway with a camera hidden in his jacket.27 An unobserved observer with a small 35mm

Leica camera as opposed to the cumbersome large format cameras previously used, Spender

perceived himself as an invisible spy, once commenting that: “We were called spies, pryers,

mass-eavesdroppers, nosey parkers, peeping-toms, lopers, snoopers, envelope-steamers,

keyhole artists, sex maniacs, sissies and society playboys.”28 The underlying suspicions and

fears, and the reactions of the populations of the time is quite explicable considering the

limited understanding one might expect from the people of the time when they were for the

most part not fully familiar with the nature, potential use, and consequences of use of

photographs taken by individuals whose identity or motives they were not familiar with.

Spender did not limit his work to particular scenes, but also photographed people,

playgrounds, river-scenes, graffiti on walls, the ground, pavements, street scenes, and

children playing.29 In some respects, Spender’s photography is comparable to the work of

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the latter often cited as the inventor of photojournalism.30 This is also

noticeable in his use of psychological and visual space, unspoken feelings, gestures, body

27 See Plate 1 for an example of Walker Evans’s photographs on the New York subway

28 In an interview with Jeremy Mulford in Jeremy Mulford, ed., Worktown People: Photographs from Northern England,

1937-1938 (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1982), p. 16

29 Plates 2-4 present some of Humphrey Spender’s most recognised works

30 See, for example, Plates 5 and 6 for some of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s works

21

language, geometries, and the sense of something being in the air at that moment in time.31

At the same time, Spender’s photographs show a more utilitarian and many may argue, a less

poetic quality.

He recorded the identity of Bolton, and in his urban landscapes of a city then very much in

decline, the overwhelming sense is one of Bolton being a deprived and depressing city. He

captured the communication between the city’s urban landscapes and its inhabitants –

capturing and documenting the pavements, corners, empty spaces, and children playing

street games. His photography is not one of only a depressing landscape or disadvantaged

people, but one of people living their lives and children playing their games in the

environment within which they found themselves. Spender’s work is just as much a record

of the street life of the common people of Bolton. Although from an upper-middle-class

upbringing, his work shows a powerful familiarity and interaction with the struggles and

realities of daily life for the working-class and the disadvantaged communities of the time.

Spender’s work is often characterized by images of unattractive places and miserable

structures. Life he depicted is one absent any shine or reflection. Spender could find beauty

in the ordinary, often using chance to capture the moment. His photographs are deeply

personal, recording what was the way of life of the subject. Many of them were used in

exploring depression, hidden tensions and broken promises. There is however also a warmth

in Spender’s photographs. Some depict people that were, despite their difficult lives,

seemingly happy. In others, children are to be seen spreading their wings and playing their

games independently and out of sight of adult supervision. Spender himself is quoted as

commenting: “the kind of photograph that interests me most is a revelation of human

behavior […] those who, in disclosing humanity and human behavior, also disclose part of

their own attitude towards humanity and human behavior.”32

31 In an interview with Jeremy Mulford, Humphrey Spender admitted he had been enthusiastic about the work

of Cartier-Bresson from a very early time. See Mulford, p. 12

32 Humphrey Spender in an interview with Jeremy Mulford, see Mulford, p. 21.

22

Some of the initial results of the Mass Observation’s project were already published as early as

1938. During World War II, much of Mass Observation’s work was directed in support of the

war effort. Much of the work carried out at the behest of a number of Governmental

Departments involved the analyses of the population’s responses on a wide range of matters

such as political personalities, the fear of espionage, happiness, attitudes towards art, sexual

habits, and shopping. Mass Observation continued to operate into the early 1950’s, but

gradually the emphasis shifted away from social issues towards consumer behaviour.33

There is no denying that World War II had a dramatic impact on Britain, the British people,

and on their cities, and it left a lasting legacy on British art. In many ways, the war was a

turning point for British society and culture. Britain and its people exited the war as a victor.

It was a time marked by hope for the future and faith in a better society. That being said, for

post-war Britain life was also one of austerity and shortages, rationing (which continued as

late as 1954), less-than adequate social services, and a housing shortage. Its capital London

showed the scars of a long war’s bombing with bombsites still being visible into the 1950’s.34

It was to be a time of recovery and rehabilitation, and the rebuilding of the cities was viewed

a priority. It was also a time of transition and opportunity. The 1950’s proved to be

transitional both for London and for British art, and many artists and architects responded

to the changing world around them. New projects provided opportunities, raised

expectations, and initiated a renewed interest and debate around the ‘new’ urban

environment and its architecture.

As time would prove, there was no shortage in talented people who were more than eager

to contribute and influence. There was the ‘Independent Group’ of avant-garde thinkers,

33 Mass Observation continued to have an impact in the decades that followed, albeit not under the banner and

style of Mass Observation but this time more indirectly. In the 1960’s a number of the original ‘observers’ returned

to Bolton and Blackpool as part of the ‘Britain Revisited’ project team. This project was again re-launched in

1981 following the move of the archive to the University of Sussex. The project-methodology however evolved

to one of focusing on individual voices and personal experiences as reported by volunteer Mass Observers in

open-ended-question surveys. The project’s Archive is currently being held at the University of Sussex,

consisting of extensive written accounts of daily life, ephemera and photographs, while other works have been

taken into the national museum collections. See Mass Observation Archive

34 For a mapping of the WWII ‘bomb census’ refer <http://www.bombsight.org>

23

artists, art historians and architects, included in its ranks people like Richard Hamilton, Nigel

Henderson, William Turnbull, Eduardo Paolozzi, critics Reyner Banham and Toni del

Renzio, and architects Alison and Peter Smithson. They were already a prominent group of

campaigners based at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London.

One of the founding members of the Independent Group, Nigel Henderson’s involvement

with the Independent Group dates back to the Group’s early beginnings in 1952. He was

certainly also viewed as an influential member of the Group. This was certainly the view held

by writer Martin Harrison who once referred to Henderson as the “the catalyst” of the group

for Henderson’s collages (as described by Harrison) being “source of visual imagery that

uncovered innumerable areas of inquiry”.35 Best known as a documentary and experimental

photographer and artist, Henderson initially started out as a biology student, but from as

early as 1936 he started to immerse himself in the arts. His interest in the arts may well be

attributable to his close relationship with his mother who from 1938 managed Guggenheim

Jeune for Peggy Guggenheim, at the time a prominent collector of modern art in London.

This may well also be the connection that paved the way for Henderson’s early introduction

to leading figures of the avant-garde, notably individuals like Max Ernst and Marcel

Duchamp. Curators of his exhibition in the Anthony d’Offay Gallery did on occasion refer

to Peggy Guggenheim as Henderson’s “fairy godmother” who supported him financially,

something which may, coupled with his exposure and possible opportunities through his

mother, explain Henderson’s opportunity to exhibit two of his own collages at the Guggenheim

Jeune in 1938.36 Joining the war effort in 1939, Henderson served as a pilot in Coastal

Command until his discharge in 1945, leaving the forces with a serviceman’s grant to study.

Moving to London’s East-End with his wife Judith Stephen, they settled in Bethnal Green,

an area of extreme poverty, overcrowded housing, and poor sanitation. It is also an area that

35 Martin Harrison, Transition: The London Art Scene in the Fifties (London: Merrell in association with Barbican

Art, 2002), published on the occasion of the exhibition, p. 99

36 They also note the influence of Laurence Vail (Peggy Guggenheim’s first husband, French writer, sculptor

and painter of Dadaism) on his collages. Anthony d’Offay (Firm), Nigel Henderson: Paintings, Collages &

Photographs, exhibition catalogue (London: unknown binding, 1977), unnumbered p. 5

24

suffered severe bombing damage. Henderson joined the Shade School of Art where he met

Eduardo Paolozzi, an event which proved to be the start of a life-long friendship.37

Henderson’s wife Judith Stephen was an anthropologist who between 1948-1952 assisted the

sociologist J. L. Petersen with a sociology course titled “Discover your Neighbors”. The

course was mainly targeted at professional people in the Bethnal Green area, mainly intended

as a course to create an awareness of the culture in which they were working and living. There

is no evidence of Henderson in any way being involved in his wife’s project, but it was during

this time that Henderson started taking his drily observed, documentary photographs of life

on the street.38 Henderson at this time continued to experiment with collage, like Surrealists

and Dada artists, and with the physicality of photography.39 Frank Whitford, the curator of

Nigel Henderson’s exhibition in Kettle’s Yard in 1977, noted that Henderson in his practice

came close to what American artists and photographers were producing at that time, and

compared Henderson’s works with that to be expected within Abstract Expressionism.40

There is reason to believe that Henderson was aware of the Mass Observation project’s work

in Bolton, a project that would have also resonated with him. Martin Harrison noted that

Tom Harrisson, a co-founder of the Mass Observation, assisted his wife with her sociology

course. Henderson knew Humphrey Jennings who’s film Spare Time (1939) was partially shot

37 Martin Harrison mentions that Henderson “failed to complete a single painting there” – Martin Harrison,

Young Meteors: British Photojournalism 1957-1965 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998), p. 23

38 Roy Kozlovsky comments that Henderson used a section of Stephen’s notes (written on a daily basis,

observations of everyday life of the community) in his catalogue of the photographs. Roy Kozlovsky, “Urban

Play: Intimate Space and Postwar Subjectivity”, Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton, Marina Lathouri, ed., Intimate

Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 204

39 Henderson’s photograms, distorted or ‘stressed’ images he produced in the early 1950s, were aimed to stress

a point or evoke an atmosphere of an ordinary subject to make it surreal, unrecognisable (see, for example,

Plate 7 for his Stressed Photograph, c.1950). In his collages, photographs were transformed into something

that could at the same time come over as at the macro-level something resembling a map of the landscape and

on the micro-level something representing a scratched urban surface (see Plates 8-9 for some of Nigel

Henderson’s collages). Arguably, he may well have been inspired by aerial photography and the aerial views of

the world which he grew accustomed to during his wartime service as an aviator.

40 Frank Whitford, Nigel Henderson: Photographs, Collages, Paintings (Cambridge: Kettle’s Yard, 1977), exhibition

catalogue, unnumbered p. 10

25

on location in Bolton where the Mass Observation project was conducted.41 Martin Harrison

also goes on to mention Henderson’s friendship with two individuals who were directly

involved in Mass-Observation’s Worktown Project in the 1930s.42 This was at or around

1949 when Henderson started to take photographs of people living in London’s East End.

There is nothing to indicate that Henderson ever entertained the idea of embarking on a

photography career. He was at first just wandering around his neighborhood, observing life,

and at some point started to carry a camera. All indications are that of his photography career

having started from photography as a hobby. He portrayed the grittiness of everyday live in

Bethnal Green, the people, urban surfaces, shop fronts, and graffiti.43 He had an eye for a

moment – there often seemed to be something surreal in the chance of his reportage

photographs. Henderson captured the individual’s experience of living the city.44

Children from working-class families proved to be a popular subject of his observations with

Peter Samuels being his favourite model.45 The realities of austerity and hardship put toys

out of reach for many working-class children. Understandably, many children in that position

will make the street their playground. He depicted the naivety of childhood and the ease with

which children manage to interact with their environment. Whereas many may interpret these

photographs of children who often were in need to be also a symbol of need, there were also

many who viewed children playing in the slums as a regenerative social force. Roy Kozlovsky

for example, an adjunct professor at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture, goes as far as

to see the play of children as a metaphor for reconstruction and regeneration, and refers to

newspapers of the time wherein they were in fact referred to as “post-war builders”.46 Streets

41 For a more detailed discussion refer see Harrison, Young Meteors, pp. 22-23

42 Martin Harrison makes specific reference to Julian Trevelyan and Graham Bell. See Harrison, Transition,

p. 100

43 See Plates 10, 11 for vivid examples of Henderson’s photographs at that time.

44 Nigel Henderson’s photographic approach, however, can be opposed to that of Henri Cartier-Bresson, a

photographer whose works Henderson knew via an ICA exhibition in 1952. Henderson’s focus seems to have

been very much limited to capturing life as it was where he lived, Bethnal Green

45 See Plate 12 for one of many Henderson’s photographs of Peter Samuels

46 Kozlovsky, p. 195

26

became playgrounds to rehabilitate bombed sites, starting regeneration from within.47 Play

became associated with the making of citizens through the concept of fair play, a

strengthening force within communities, and as a vehicle for the promotion of a liberal model

of democratic citizenship.

Alison and Peter Smithson, both active members of the Independent Group, recognized in

his pictures the self-sufficiency of street life. The Smithsons prior to 1950 worked in the

London Country Council (LCC) Architects’ department, but then moved into private

practice.48 This was at a time marked by post-war lack of resources with most projects at that

time financed by government. It was a time when admirers of Le Corbusier and likeminded

individuals could expect opposition from older generations intent on maintaining the status

quo. The Smithsons were introduced to the Independent Group by Henderson and Paolozzi,

both of whom they met at the Central School of Art in 1952. Henderson was at that time

still teaching an evening class in creative photography.49 With the Smithsons came a fresh

and rigorous understanding of modern architecture.

The Smithsons incorporated some of Henderson’s photographs of children’s street-play into

an Urban Re-identification grid that presented their view on urban planning and altered the

experience of Henderson’s photos.50 This Grid was ultimately presented to the CIAM – the

Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (Eng. International Congresses of Modern

47 See John Lewis, ed., Urban Structuring: Studies of Alison & Peter Smithson (London: Studio Vista Ltd, 1967),

p. 15, where John Lewis expresses the opinion: “The street is an arena for social expression”.

48 For more detailed background information see Helena Webster, ed., Modernism Without Rhetoric: Essays on the

works of Alison and Peter Smithson (London: Academy Editions, 1997), p. 17

49 Ken Garland, one of Henderson’s students, was once quoted as saying: “[…] not only did Nigel open you

up to all kinds of experimentation with the photographic process, he was also completely at home with the

European modernism that had by-passed Britain. We had a lot of catching up to do, and it was Nigel and not

our main tutors that introduced us to key texts like Kepes’ Language of Vision and Moholy-Nagy’s Vision in

Motion”. Quoted by Martin Harrison in Harrison, Transition, p. 103

50 Alison and Peter Smithson, Grille pour le C.I.A.M. d’Aix-en-Provence (Urban Re-identification Grid), 1952-53,

collage, photographs (by Nigel Henderson), ink on paper and papiers colles, 83.5 x 275.5 cm. Centre Pompidou,

MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Georges

27

Architecture) in 1953.51 Founded in Switzerland in 1928, the CIAM was an architectural

organisation credited for arranging a number of congresses held across Europe. The main

objective of the CIAM was the planning of international gatherings and to be a vehicle for

debate on urban living and design.

The CIAM VIII conference of 1952 raised questions as to the formulation of the notion of

habitat, a living environment. Though the members, on this question, failed to reach

agreement on this notion, the discussion is believed to have somehow resulted in a change

of thinking within CIAM that culminated in a shift from Le Corbusier’s “industry of living”

– a zoned city containing standardised dwellings and different areas for work, home, and

leisure, to a new discussion of town planning with emphasis on the immediate surroundings

of the dwelling, an idea that was further developed over the following conferences.

CIAM IX, the first conference where “young” members were allowed to participate, gave

the Smithsons the opportunity to present their urban analysis and address a number of

questions facing urbanism. Grids had always been a popular presentation aid at CIAM

conferences, and the Smithsons presented their information in a grid, but in this instance

they presented it with a somewhat altered structure.52 In their presentation, eleven of

Henderson’s photographs of the Bethnal Green area were framed in a social and architectural

context. His works, including his famous Gillian Alixander Skipping and Chisenhale Road, were

collaged with the Smithsons’ housing project presented for the Golden Line competition in

1952.53 They focused on the street as an extension of the house, used the unique needs of

children to play to illustrate the social needs of the whole society, and suggested a new urban

51 Between 19-26 July 1953, Aix-en-Provence, France. According to Dirk van den Heuvel, a former associate

professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Delft and a recognized expert in the history and theory of post-war

modern architecture, the conference was the largest and most diverse yet, attended as it was by over 3 000

delegates and observers. Dirk van den Heuvel, Team 10: 1953-81, in search of a utopia of the present (Rotterdam:

NAi, 2005), pp. 20-21

52 The grid was developed in 1947 by Le Corbusier while preparing for the C.I.A.M VII under Le Corbusier’s

leadership. Referred to by Catherine Blame in Van den Heuvel, Team 10, p. 18, and Ben Highmore, “Rough

Poetry: Patio and Pavilion Revisited”, Oxford Art Journal, Issue 29/ 2006, p. 283

53 See Plates 13-16 for some of Nigel Henderson’s works incorporated into the Grid

28

planning philosophy with a focus on a local environment instead of linear street planning.54

They focused on what was missing in the town, a message they incorporated into the Grid:

“In the suburbs and slums the vital relationship between the house and the street survives,

children run about, people stop and talk, vehicles are parked and tinkered with… you know

the milkman, you are outside your house in your street.”55 Instead of a careful analysis, they

prepared a grid of patterns of association supported with a statement to the effect that a

community “should be built up of a hierarchy of associational elements (the House, the

Street, the District, the City)”, those aspects of real life that had fallen “through the mesh of

the four functions (housing, work, recreation and traffic)”.56 Henderson’s photos became

instrumental to the Smithsons’ rethinking of urban life.

Their statements were not among the most discussed at CIAM.57 It was at or around this

time following the 1953 presentation of the grid in Aix-en-Provence, that the Smithsons,

Candilis, J. B. Bakema (of Holland) and a number of other individuals formed Team 10 where

their discussion of urban planning continued. It was an influential group that certainly

managed to shift architectural thinking and address the issues of urban infrastructure.

Henderson collaborated with the Smithsons on two important events. In 1953 together with

the Smithsons and Paolozzi he organised the exhibition Parallel of Life and Art in the ICA.58

It was an exhibition which critic Reyner Banham in as early as 1955 described as key

movement in the emergence of New Brutalism in art and architecture in England, New

54 Smithsons’ concept of half-open and half-closed space system as it was developed through their career is

discussed by Max Risselada, curator and professor of architecture, in Max Risselada, “The Space Between”,

Max Risselada, ed., Alison & Peter Smithson: a Critical Anthology (Barcelona: Poligrafa, 2011), pp. 346-353

55 Transcribed by Roy Kozlovsky in Kozlovsky, p. 199

56 Quoted at Webster, p. 46

57 Dirk van den Heuvel later recollected that it was in fact the Bidonville Mahieddine Grid, CIAM-Alger of

1953 that was the most memorable (see Plate 17). Van den Heuvel, pp. 22-23

58 Parallel of Life and Art Exhibition, I.C.A., Dover Street, London, 11 Sep – 18 Oct 1953. According to Sze

Tsung Leong and Chuihua Judy Chung, the exhibition was originally called ‘Sources’. Sze Tsung Leong,

Chuihua Judy Chung, ed., The Charged Void: Architecture. Alison and Peter Smithson (New York: The Monacelli

Press, 2001), p. 118

29

Brutalism being a reference to art brut (Debuffet, Pollock and the Paris art scene).59 The artists

created a total environment with a host of black and white images taken from a range of art

and non-art sources.60 Arguably not ‘beautiful art’, but processed images with a considerable

quantity of non-art imagery, it included photographs from newspapers, commercially

produced blow-ups of micro-photographs, x-rays, geological aerial views, and archaeological

objects. In other cases, documents were arranged together with documentary photography,

some images were unrecognisable. The exhibition went as far as including a photograph

taken by Hans Namuth of Jackson Pollock working in his studio, a photo of a burned forest

in California, and another one taken at the funeral of King George VI. Many will view the

seemingly odd and random arrangement of works as radical: there were no labels, some

works were installed hanging under the ceiling, and the printed guide was unreliable. It was

more of a collage of different objects inside the gallery space with different layers of

information, but with little connection with one another. Everything seemed to be arranged

so as to suggest to the viewer to find clues, to become active participants of the show, to

play with the mixture of objects and photographs discovered, and to find in it possible

correlations with their own everyday lives.

In 1956, Henderson, Paolozzi and the Smithsons contributed to the This is Tomorrow

exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery with their Patio and Pavilion section.61 Together with other

artists, including the prominent Richard Hamilton with his Just what it is that makes today’s

homes so different, so appealing?, they addressed what was argued to be a problem of a lack of

connection between architecture and the inhabitants.62 Lawrence Alloway, an English art

critic and curator of This is Tomorrow, described the exhibition as one where art and

59 Banham claimed New Brutalism to have started as a result of a common mood shared by a number of artists

in London, including their interest in Le Corbusier and non-Marxist politics. Reyner Banham, “The New

Brutalism”, in Max Risselada, ed., Alison & Peter Smithson: a Critical Anthology (Barcelona: Poligrafa, 2011),

originally published in 1955, p. 114

60 See Plate 18 for an installation shot of the exhibition

61 For Ben Highmore this exhibition was another example of New Brutalism. Highmore, p. 271

See Plate 19 for dual pages from This is tomorrow exhibition catalogue originally published in 1956 prepared by

the artists

62 See Plate 20 for Richard Hamilton’s work

30

architecture were presented as something resembling a “many-challenged activity” that was

“as factual and far from ideal standards as the street outside”.63 The curators of the

reconstructed 2010 This is Tomorrow exhibition (a show that explored the original 1956 This is

Tomorrow exhibition), have voiced the opinion that the original show was the beginning of

what can be considered a new spirit of British art and the whole installation concept.64

12 groups of artists, musicians, architects and designers worked independently on their part

of the show, but eventually presented the final show as one environment. The lack of any

interpretations was once again intended to challenge the audience.65

For this exhibition, Henderson, Paolozzi and the Smithsons produced a symbolic human

habitat.66 The pavilion, a structure resembling a shed, symbolized the private space, and the

enclosed area symbolized the patio (the public space) which was “furnished with symbols for

all human needs”, i.e. an image of a tree for nature, rocks and natural objects for stability, a

sculpture of a head – for a man, the frog and the dog – for animals, the light box – for family,

a wheel for machines, and a photo of a house for a private space.67 Henderson’s large collage

Head of Man symbolized the inhabitant of the space.68 The main structure was made of wood

with aluminum walls that reflected the interior and symbolized the light, and a semi-

transparent plastic roof that revealed the objects placed on top. The floor of the patio was

covered in sand with some elements impressed into it i.e. bricks, stones, and sculptures.

Symbolic representations of objects and concepts suggested the active involvement of the

viewers. James Stirling, Michael Pine and Richard Matthews were subsequently to say that:

“a total sense of environment will only be brought about by people themselves wanting it.

63 Lawrence Alloway, “Introduction I”, Yiakoumaki, unnumbered p. 14

64 See exhibition catalogue: Nayia Yiakoumaki, curator, Iwona Blazwick and Nayia Yiakoumaki, preface, This is

tomorrow (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2010), originally published in 1956

65 Iwona Blazwick and Nayia Yiakoumaki, “Preface”, Yiakoumaki, unnumbered pp. 1-2

66 See Plate 21 for an installation shot of Patio and Pavilion, 1956

67 The artists’ comments to their part of the show. Yiakoumaki, unnumbered pp. 61-63

68 Nigel Henderson, Head of a Man, 1956, photographic collage on paper mounted on board, 159.7 x 121.6 cm.

Tate collection.

31

Architects, painters and sculptors can only help by developing together their means of

expression to act as a stimulus to this end, and not by working in a formalist vacuum”.69

In 2006 Ben Highmore in his highly acclaimed article “Rough Poetry: Patio and Pavilion

Revisited” draw correlations of the way of presenting the objects and images and the Patio

and Pavilion’s aesthetics of the everyday with Henderson’s study of shops display in Bethnal

Green and with North American advertising – aesthetic method that already existed in

everyday, “the practice of layering and putting next to”.70 For him, the Patio and Pavilion is

not just an installation of different objects, materials, and panels, but a “conglomeration of

references” – rural dwelling, a shed in Bethnal Green, a post-nuclear ruin, a junk playground,

a symbol of discontinuity between architectural plan and occupation. The reference to both

the pavilion and the patio in the title of the installation, and the installation of different

objects represented an emerging urban discourse of the mid fifties in Britain and referred to

architectural and artistic debates of that time – shift to a more human-centered urban

environment.

This exhibition marked the end of the Independent Group with its ultimate disbandment in

1956. It is to be noted that the artists referred to above were by no means the only artists or

the most prominent artists associated with the Independent Group. The Group was also

home to many other influential British artists and architects whom associated with the

Group.71

Many photographers, past and present, have found inspiration in children’s play. It is

universal and timeless. Children playing on the streets of London has long been a source of

69 Essay by James Stirling, Michael Pine and Richard Matthews. Yiakoumaki, unnumbered p. 78

70 Highmore, p. 283

71 Martin Harrison among others mentions Colin St. John Wilson who worked together with Alan Colquihoun

and Peter Carter, responsible for some Corbusian developments categorized as New Brutalism; Jon Catleugh,

Richard Lannoy and others. Harrison, Transition, p. 130

32

inspiration for Roger Mayne whose name became synonymous with street photography,

particularly his shots of disadvantaged children in the still war-damaged 1950s London.72

With a degree in Chemistry from Oxford, Mayne instead decided on pursuing a career in

photography, a hobby of his at university. He joined camera clubs, became a member of the

ICA, learned from other photographers’ practice, and built friendships with other

photographers. One of the prominent photographers he befriended was Nigel Henderson

with whom he spent some time in Bethnal Green.

Many of Mayne’s photographs were taken in and around Southam Street, North Kensington,

London, between 1956 and 1961. A part of London in 1963 declared as not suitable for

human habitation, it was later demolished and replaced by what can at best be described as

a Brutalist experiment in high rise tower block living. It was, however, an area, as

disadvantaged and shabby, as it was that appealed to Mayne. He was once quoted as having

said: “The reason for photographing poor streets is that I love them and the life on them

[…] empty, the streets have their own kind of beauty, a kind of decaying splendor and always

great atmosphere - whether romantic on a hazy winter day, or listless when the summer is

hot; sometimes it is forbidding; or it may be warm and friendly on a sunny spring weekend

when the street is swarming with children playing, or adults walking through or standing

gossiping.”73

For Mayne, the street is the arena for people’s lives. Although every street-activity was equally

important for him, his focus was very much on children and their play. His observations of

street life transmitted a love and warmth towards children. His works, usually against a

backdrop of poor housing areas, nevertheless portray scenes full of joy and happiness. In the

1950’s London, in areas that were lacking in the playgrounds and facilities today taken for

72 Mayne has been widely exhibited in Britain and worldwide. Among the last exhibitions a recent exhibition in

Bath can be mentioned: Roger Mayne: Aspects of a Great Photographer, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, 26 January –

7 April 2013

73 From Universities and Left Review, Spring 1959, quoted in Ray Gosling (introduction), Roger Mayne:

Photographs (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001), p. 18

33

granted, and not limited by contemporary regulations and safety requirements affecting

contemporary playgrounds, children played in the street. On Mayne’s photographs we can

see them playing football and cricket, we can almost hear their laughing, giggling or crying.74

Mayne’s archive is a beautiful historical survey. He captured the spirit of the people. They

might have lived in slums, but they could still play and have fun.

Mayne received recognition quite early on in his career. As early as 1956, his works were

exhibited and acquired by MOMA and other major collections in the world, and it struck a

chord with many architects and their concerns with town planning.75 Mayne’s photographs

are not as dispassionate as one may at first think. He himself acknowledged the power of the

photographer in the pictorial illusions he creates, once quoted as having said: “Photography

involves two main distortions – the simplification into black and white, and the seizing of an

instant in time. It is this particular mixture of reality and unreality, and the photographer’s

power to select, that makes it possible for photography to be art. Whether it is good art

depends on the power and the truth of the artists’ statement.”76

New York City in the 1970’s was a city in decline. For New York City the 1970s was a time

of urban crisis, the relocation of industry to other states, a collapse of the city’s manufacturing

base, and a time of population decline. This left in its wake a city left with abandoned estates

and rising levels of crime. An insightful visual record of this world-city as it was in the 1970’s

is to be gleaned from the records or the Documerica project, organised and maintained by the

Environmental Protection Agency between the periods 1972 to 1977.77 It was a project that

in fact shared quite a few similarities with the Mass-Observation project in Britain in the 1930s.

74 See Plates 22-24 for some of Roger Mayne’s works

75 Theo Grosby, an architect whose name can be linked to many major developments in design spanning several

decades, has in the past described Mayne as one of the few English photographers who disclosed a world of

modern fact: “a portrait of urban sub-life of which, without him, [Grosby] would have been unaware”. Quoted

in Mark Haworth-Booth (preface), The Street Photographs of Roger Mayne (London: Zelda Cheatle Press, 1986),

p. 78

76 From an interview with Peace News in 1960, in Gosling, p. 18

77 See Plates 25, 26 for some of the Documerica project photographs

34

The main objective of the project was to gather evidence of the harmful effects of the lifestyle

of the society of the time on the environment, but along the way photographers also covered

the daily lives of ordinary people across the United States.

At the same time, however, the financial and artistic sectors started to grow. It was a time of

permissiveness, mass protests against the Ford administration’s policies, garbage strikes in

1978, the 1979 5th Avenue anti-nuclear sit-in protests, disco, bell-bottoms, big cars, punk-

rock, 6th Avenue pride parades, environmentalists, Iggy Pop, Willian Friedkin’s The French

Connection in 1971, Woody Allen’s Manhattan in 1979, Studio 54 nightclub. It was also John

Lennon’s last refuge. With the decline of the city and fall of the dollar, life in the city became

cheaper. This all seemed to provide the right setting for Manhattan to attract increasing

numbers of individuals from what can for the lack of any other more apt description be

referred to as other ‘alternative’ social and artistic groupings.

It was during this time of transition when SoHo was born as a centre for artistic activity,

arguably the first example of the revitalisation of the city area in New York, and also marking

the renaissance of New York as an art stage. Galleries started to relocate to SoHo, new

studios started to open, and artist-cooperatives were established. Forrest Mayer’s piece The

Wall (also known as The Gateway to SoHo), a piece of art almost completely covering one of

the wall-surfaces of a building situated in SoHo, was very much the face of a changing area.78

Mayer, who once referred to himself as the “pioneer of SoHo” was once quoted as having

said that: “What made SoHo was all of these cheap lofts”.79 As early as in 1976 the

phenomenon of SoHo was explored by the Berlin-based Akademie der Kunste in their

exhibition titled New York – Downtown Manhattan. Soho.80 The transformation of SoHo was

78 Roger Myers, The Wall, 1973, 42 seafoam green pylons on the north face of 599 Broadway, New York.

Plate 27

79 Interview by Joelle Panisch, “The Pioneers of SoHo: Forest Myers”, SoHo Journal, accessed 5 September

2013: <http://www.sohojournal.com/content/pioneers-soho-forrest-myers>

80 See exhibition catalogue: Rene Block, New York – Downtown Manhattan. Soho (Berlin: Akademie der Kunste

and Berliner Festwochen, 1976). The three part exhibition “New York-Downtown Manhattan: Soho” that run

from September 5 - October 17, 1976 was meant to portray the culture of Soho and show the relationship

35

evidently something that drew international attention with Rene Block, referring to Soho,

commenting that “for European time standards, the speed at which this industrial slum, even

though slated for demolition, has become the focal point of Western Avant-Garde is nothing

short of mind-boggling,” and describing SoHo as “a state of mind, an intellectual attitude”.81

Artists played with the city and used it in their performances. The city provided them with

an open stage for their experiments and became a laboratory for their ideas. The city became

their studio and their medium. A number of notable artists and art movements come to

mind. A prominent one deserving mention is the Fluxus movement, an international

movement of artists with members as far afield as Japan and the West Coast. It was towards

the end of the 1960s when they started to have urban and playful performative practices.

Their festivals in New York really started to blossom once George Maciunas started

coordinating them.82 New York Fluxus is viewed as a crucial factor in the emergence of SoHo

with Peter Frank in 1976 describing it as “the earliest conceptual and performance activity

to occur between Houston and Canal Streets.”83 It was also at around this time when a series

of Street Works events were organised, the pieces mostly performances and physical objects

using some or other New York City street.84 It was in March 1969 when the project started

off with Street Works I consisting of only 7 participants them being Vito Hannibal Acconi,

Gregory Battcock, Meredith Monk, Anne Waldman, Les Levine, Arakawa, and Lucy

R. Lippard, but by April of that same year Street Works II showed a compliment of

40 participants. It continued to grow in interest after that.

Other widely recognised Street Works include that of Vito Acconci with his Following Piece,

where he was playing with the idea of the interaction between the art activity and everyday

between art and city life through theater, music, and film. The catalogue includes essays by Rene Block,

Lawrence Alloway, Peter Frank, Lucy Lippard, Douglas Davis, Stephen B. Reichard, Joan La Barbara.

81 Block, p. 7

82 For example, George Maciunas and Takako Saito, Flux-Treadmill, for “Flux Game Fest”, 19 May 1973 in

80 Wooster Street. Plate 28

83 Peter Frank, “New York Fluxus”, Rene Block, New York – Downtown Manhattan. Soho (Berlin: Akademie der

Ku nste and Berliner Festwochen, 1976), p. 151

84 For example, Richard Hayman, Bellroll, Street Works, April 1975, on Mercer street. Plate 29

36

life and over three weeks followed one randomly chosen stranger through the streets of New

York until they entered a private location.85 In 1975, there was Daniel Buren‘s Seven Ballets in

Manhattan involving dancers carrying placards featuring the striped work of Buren, an event

accepted as artwork by SoHo audiences, but interpreted as protest by Wall Street.86 Then

there was Hans Haacke’s Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1,

1971 where he documented in photography and then mapped the real-estate holdings of one

of New York City’s most renowned slum landlords.87 Lucy Lippard, an internationally

renowned art critic and curator, acknowledges the transformation and role of SoHo as being

“a case history in the legend of urban pioneers, the forerunner of a larger nationwide

movement […] When middle-class people had left the cities for the suburbs in the seventies,

they “repossessed” working class and industrial neighborhoods, ineluctably changing the

city’s geography and economy”.88 This transformation was accompanied with and may

arguably have been driven by what Lippard has referred to as “a collage of unlikely networks:

between artists and other artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, and musicians on the one hand,

and between them and the marketplace and the social superstructure in the other hand.”89

Laurie Anderson, who was herself one of these early ‘Soho pioneers’, describes the artistic

environment of early 1970’s New York as “[…] Paris in the ‘20s. I was part of a group of

artists/pioneers that included Gordon Matta-Clark, Gene Highstein, Susie Harris, Tina

Girouard, Richard Nonas, Dickie Landry, Phil Glass, Keith Sommier and several other

sculptors and musicians. We often worked on each other’s pieces and boundaries between

art forms were loose […] We were very aware that we were creating an entirely new scene

85 Vito Acconci, Following Piece, performed in New York City between October 3 and 25, 1969. Plate 30

86 Daniel Buren, Seven Ballets in Manhattan, work in situ, New York, USA, 27 May-2 June 1975. Plate 31

87 Hans Haaske, Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, 142 photos with data

sheets, 2 maps, 6 charts, slide excerpt. Photograph courtesy Fred Scruton; all Hans Haacke images courtesy

Hans Haacke. Plate 32

88 Lucy R. Lippard, “The Lure of the local: Senses of place in a multicentered society, New York, 1997”, quoted

in Blazwick, p. 128

89 Lucy R. Lippard, “The Geography of Street Time: A Survey of Street Works Downtown”, Block, p. 181

37

(later known as ‘Downtown’). Gordon Matta-Clark was the centre of this scene, which ended

with his death.”90

Gordon Matta-Clark was one of the most notable artists who worked directly in the urban

environment and who challenged the urban context in his very unique way, even by today’s

standards. Mostly known for his ‘building cuts’, that is to say removing parts of buildings or

splitting dwelling houses in half allowing to see through the structure, Matta-Clark had a

talent for manipulating the fabric of the city.91 Born in New York, Matta-Clark hailed from

a family of artists, growing up in what can be considered an avant-garde artistic environment,

surrounded by people more aligned to the bohemian side of New York. His mother had

been a member of a Surrealist group based in Paris. His father was a renowned Chilean

Surrealist artist at one time working for Le Corbusier in Paris, and his godfather was Marcel-

Duchamp.

After spending a year in Paris studying French literature at the Sorbonne, Matta-Clark went

on to complete an architectural course at Cornell University, New York. Matta-Clark’s time

at Cornell can arguably be considered as one of the shaping factors in his later life and as

expressed in his later work. Cornell University’s educational approach in the 1960s was very

much based on critique of modernist architecture and architectural contextualism, and the

influence of the environment, an approach that could most likely be traced to the influence

of Colin Rowe and his Cornell-based Urban Design Studio.92 With the limited number of

new developments going on at the time, 1970’s New York offered few opportunities to

young aspiring architects. Not going into practice, Matta-Clark began working with

abandoned buildings in New York marked for demolition. From early on it was evident that

90 Laurie Anderson is quoted in Yee, p. 17

91 See Plates 33, 34 for Gordon Matta-Clark’s most famous ‘building cuts’: Splitting, 1974, and Conical Intersect,

1975

92 Stephen Walker quoting Tom Schumacher, one of Rowe’s students, commented: “It is precisely the ways in

which idealized forms can be adjusted to a context or used as “collage” that contextualism seeks to explain,

and it is the systems of geometric organisation which can be abstracted from any given context that

contextualism seeks to divine as design tools”. Stephen Walker, Gordon Matta-Clark: Art, Architecture and the

Attack on Modernism (London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), p. 7

38

although he was operating within a modernist city, his approach was one absent modernism.

His time at Cornell coupled with the observable changes in the architectural and artistic

modernism of the 1960s, minimalism, Pop, land-art, and site-specific works, all could have

had a significant influence on him.

His very physical play with the city was highly irrational, with his investment in fifteen tiny

properties perhaps the most irrational project he embarked on.93 In 1973, the city of New

York auctioned off plots of land for anyone wanting to own a New York property. In reality

it was no more but a city-attempt to get rid of all the holes in the urban strata, but at least

offering the city a return in property tax. Matta-Clark became familiar with the auctions

through his friend Alanna Heiss, founder of the Institute for Art and Urban Resources. Heiss

herself was in fact looking for abandoned sites with the potential of use as temporary

exhibition spaces. Accompanying Heiss to these auctions, Matta-Clark found himself to be

inspired by these small unusable and sometimes inaccessible spaces.

Matta-Clark ended up purchasing 15 of these properties, 14 equally unusable bits in Queens,

and another slot on Staten Island, all in the price range of twenty-five to seventy-five dollars

per slot.94 These were often no more but narrow areas between houses, narrow slices of land

along curbs, or corner slots of little more but several square feet. All these slots were of odd

dimensions, some were only one or two feet wide. His stated intention with these odd plots

was that it was intended for use as artwork, once quoted by Times as having said: “The

artworks will consist of three parts: a written documentation of the piece of land, including

exact dimensions and location and perhaps a list of weeds growing there; a full-scale

photograph of the property, and the property itself. The first two parts will be displayed in a

93 Series of works Realty Properties: Fake Estates, 1974-75

94 Technical details provided in Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi and Frances Richard, ed., Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon

Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates (New York: Cabinet Books, 2005), p. 43

39

gallery, and buyers of the art will purchase the deed to the land as well”.95 Over the following

years, he collected the relevant maps and deeds and photographed these little slots of land.

Matta-Clark thus became a New York property owner with a little portfolio of little

properties that was of no practical use and often not even accessible. Though these little slots

of land were private, the idea of ownership was washed out. Highly irrational estates revealed

the absurdity of them being brought to sale by the city in the first place. Matta-Clark however

started reusing these spaces that were so magnificently lacking any other rational function –

as artwork. They existed as private properties and as physical areas, but by incorporating

them into his artwork, they played a new role. There was something surreal in those spaces

between spaces. In an interview with Lisa Bear he explained: “When I bought those

properties at the New York City Auction, the description of them that always excited me

most was “inaccessible”. What I basically wanted to do was to designate spaces that wouldn’t

be seen and certainly not occupied. Buying them was my own take on the strangeness of

existing property demarcation lines. Property is so all pervasive. Everyone’s notion of

ownership is determined by the use factor”.96

Matta-Clark was questioning the boundaries between the private and public space, focussing

as he did on the use of land and space and the materiality of space. He pointed on a very

strange development of the city and strangeness of property demarcation lines. He didn’t

involve other people in play, but made the city spots themselves play. There are

commentators who have drawn comparisons and argued correlations between Matta-Clark’s

project and the Situationist’s urban interventions.97

Matta-Clark visited his properties several times. Jaime Davidovich, a friend who

accompanied Matta-Clark on a visit of these properties in 1975 and whom also recorded the

95 Matta-Clark in an interview to Times, quoted by Jennifer Johung in Replacing home: from primordial hut to digital

network in contemporary art (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), pp. 33-34

96 Quoted in Johung, p. 38

97 Judith Russi, “The Idea of Community in the Work of Gordon Matta-Clark”, Corinne Diserens, ed., Gordon

Matta-Clark (London: Phaidon, c2003 2004), p. 148

40

visit on video, recalled a very negative and sometimes hostile reaction by neighbours when

told that part of their driveway or parking space was owned by Matta-Clark.98 There is some

debate around what he was going to do with these little plots of land. There is some evidence

to believe that he discussed the project and ideas with the Anarchitecture group, an artist’s

group of young artists whose collaborative efforts eventually culminated in the Anarchitecture

exhibition in 1974. He died in 1978 without realising any plan. The properties eventually

reverted back to the city due to delinquent tax bills. Matta-Clark’s collection of original

documentation relating to his project i.e. photographs, deeds and maps, were travelling from

one collection to another until 1992, when Jane Crawford, his widow, assembled it in collages

for Matta-Clark’s retrospective.99 The Cabinet Magazine in 2005 repurchased the little slots in

an attempt to recover the initial artwork.

SoHo in the 1970’s also became a centre for music, art and performance. Not only did plays

and performances play itself out at the micro-level within the confines of SoHo venues, but

the SoHo landscape was incorporated into some of those performances. Stephen Koch was

in 1976 once quoted as having said: “Performance […] is the word used when referring to

any event in SoHo in which people do things in front of the audience. […] For some reason,

one always must climb stairs to reach a performance. The ascent is the same to reach the

most modest, well, dump, with battered floors and grimy windows, or the cool sanctum of

the Castelli gallery (downtown) of the high grandeur of the Whitney. And when you have

gotten to the top of whatever stairs you have climbed, you will find yourself not in a theatre

but in a “space”.”100

A number of notable SoHo artists did not only climb stairs to reach ‘a space’ or to experience

the performing platform as ‘space’, but made ‘space’ their performing platform. Of these

artists, Trisha Brown is arguably the best example. A native of California, Brown relocated

98 See Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi and Frances Richard, ed., Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake Estates

(New York: Cabinet Books, 2005), p. 47

99 Retrospective of Gordon Matta-Clark, IVAM Centro Julio Gonzalez in Valencia, Spain, 1992

100 Stephen Koch, “Reflections on SoHo”, Block, pp. 132-133

41

to New York in 1961. With a background in dance, her dance training included ballet, jazz,

acrobatics and tap. She learned composition from Louis Horst and dance technique from

Martha Graham at Mills College, San Francisco. She also took some classes from the

influential dance workshops of Merce Cunningham and Anna Halprin. Brown joined the

New York based Judson Dance Theatre, a dance company that, according to internationally

renowned curator Peter Eleey, laid the foundation for postmodern dance.101 Named after the

Judson Memorial Church where they performed, a venue that previously hosted

performances by artists such as Allan Kaprow and Jim Dine, the Judson of the time showed

strong influence by Merce Cunningham and John Cage with their ideas of spontaneity, the

use of chance, scores and instructions.

Brown participated in some of the Fluxus festivals, performed at one of Yoko Ono’s events,

collaborated with film and video artists, and grew close to Robert Rauschenberg who she

met at Cunningham’s studio. Cunningham, Cage and Rauschenberg not only had a strong

influence on Brown’s artistic development and practice, but evidently had considerable

artistic influence in 1970’s New York. Joan La Barbara in her essay for the exhibition New

York – Downtown Manhattan. Soho (1976), noted that New York cooperative events took roots

in John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s works in environments created by Robert

Rauschenberg.102

In 1970, Brown formed the Trisha Brown Company. She employed rooftops and walls in

her various performances, performances that in fact went far beyond the limits of dance. Her

Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, for example, involved the slow and well controlled

rappelling of a man from a SoHo building rooftop ‘walking’ horizontally at a 90-degree angle

101 Peter Eleey, ed., Trisha Brown: So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing (Minneapolis:

Bolger, 2008), p. 10

102 Joan La Barbara, “SoHo, a community of cooperating artists a compendium of art: music, dance, video,

theatre and assorted combinations, discussing work performed in and/or by members of the community”,

Block, p. 174

42

down the face of the building.103 This is a technique once she again employed in her Women

Walking Down a Ladder which involved what appears to be a woman descending down a

water-tower, but this time ‘walking’ down the steel-ladder horizontally at a 90-degree angle

as opposed to climbing down vertically.104

Her Roof Piece (also going by the alternative title: Roof and Fire Piece) is probably one of her

most famous pieces, partly due to the fact that it was photographed and filmed by Babette

Mangolte.105 First staged in 1971, it was repeated in a different location in 1973. Using several

cityscapes as stage, she used and integrated buildings with the alleyways and gaps between

them in her play. Several performers dressed in red transmitted movements from one to

another and from rooftop to rooftop. The movement of one dancer on one rooftop would

be copied by another in his/her line of sight but on another rooftop with the latter in turn

transmitting it to another. They were passing silent improvised movements, drawing

connections in the air. Wearing red costumes and occupying line-of-sight positions along the

rooftops, the performing dancers could see each other, but for the observer it was impossible

to see the complete circuit in motion considering the significant distances between the

buildings and performers. Roofs of Manhattan became multilevel stage for the piece.

Whereas certain artists from 1970’s New York concentrated their efforts on art that very

much manipulated the real character of the city, presenting it as Brown did as something

surreal or different from what it in fact was, there were other artists whose focus was on

scratching beneath the urban surface, exposing and bringing into the open those naked

realities of the city that often went unseen or ignored. A good example in point will be Martha

Rosler who, with her photography of alcoholism on New York’s streets, presented some of

103 Trisha Brown, Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, performed at 80 Wooster Street, New York, on

18 April1970. Plate 35

104 Trisha Brown, Women Walking Down a Ladder, performed at 130 Greene Street, New York, 1973, on

25 February 1973. Courtesy Broadway 1602 New York. Plate 36

105 Trisha Brown, filmed by Babette Mangolte, Roof Piece (alternative title: Roof and Fire Piece), 1973, colour film

transferred to video, 31:38 minutes. Courtesy Trisha Brown Dance Company and ARTRIX (video)

43

the city’s realities that many would best ignore.106 Her subject was thus very much one of

realty that many New Yorkers might have been ignorant of as in fact being a reality.

Martha Rosler majored in literature at Brooklyn College, New York, followed by a course in

the fine arts at the University of California. Professionally she worked in video, performance,

and photography at a time when these media dominated in SoHo. Through her work Rosler

eventually built a reputation that was cemented not only in the United States but also further

afield. The curators of Rosler’s 1998-99 retrospective at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham,

referred to her as “one of the most influential artists of her generation.”107 Steve Edwards,

author of a detailed analysis of her work and referring to Rosler’s The Bowery in Two Inadequate

Descriptive Systems, described it as “one of the most significant works of the 1970’s.”108 The

work consists of an interesting collage of twenty-one images together with twenty-four text

panels with typewritten words and phrases. The photographs portray streets, alleyways and

shop-fronts littered with booze bottles and waste, the habitat destitute alcoholics call home.

The typed text consists of words, phrases and American slang relating to intoxication and

alcoholism. Playing with the photographic and literary language associated with alcoholism,

she arranged words in groups hinting at the ironic, destructive, dependant to violent.

With the more ‘traditional’ photography of poverty, one tends to find the struggles of the

poverty-stricken to be portrayed with images of them as the subject of the photograph in

their poverty-stricken environment. The circumstances under which the image was captured

will usually make redundant the need for any interpretation as to what it portrays. The plight

of the subject is evident from the circumstances and environment as captured on the

photograph. Rosler’s photographs on the other hand could just as well have been that of a

police photographer one will find in a case dossier, they are cold and detached. They present

106 Martha Rosler, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, 1974-75, forty-five gelatin silver prints of text and

image mounted on twenty-four backing boards, Edition of 5. Provenance:Whitney Museum of American Art,

New York (Edition No. 2 of 5)

107 Catherine de Zeghered, ed., Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press,

1998), p. 9

108 Steve Edwards, Martha Rosler: The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (London: Afterall, 2012), pp. 1, 6

44

the homeless in their habitat as victims of the contemporary urban environment. What is

intriguing about Rosler’s approach is the absence of people in the work. The images capture

the signs of alcoholism, regression and decay, but absent any people. There is nothing more

but the signs of their presence or passing, notably the empty booze bottles. In an interview

with Buchloh she explained that: “I wasn’t much interested in making pictures of people”.109

Allan Sekula expressed his overall impression of the work in the following terms: “The

photographs consistently pull us back to the street, to the terrain from which this pathetic

flight is attempted. Rosler’s found poetry begins with the most transcendental of metaphors,

‘aglow’, ‘illuminated’ and progress ultimately, through numerous categories of symbolic

escape mingled with blunt recognition, to the slang terms for empty bottles: ‘dead soldiers’

and ‘dead marines’. The pool of language Rosler has tapped is largely the socio-linguistic

‘property’ of the working class and the poor. The language attempts to handle irreconcilable

tension between bliss and self-destruction in a society of closed options.”110 On the face of

it the theme of the work all seems to relate to homeless alcoholics as a New York subculture.

Rosler may have focused her lens on this particular self-destructive group, but not just as an

account of the subculture itself, but also for its reflective value on various other “universes

of discourse”. In an interview with Benjamin Buchloh, Rosler explained that: “There is a

poetics of drunkenness here, a poetry-out-of-prison. Adjectives and nouns build into

metaphoric system – food imagery, nautical imagery, the imagery of industrial processes, of

militarism, derisive comparisons with animal life, foreignisms, archaisms and references to

still other universes of discourse – applied to a particular state of being, a subculture of sort,

and to the people in it.”111

An oil barrel is rolling down a street. The viewer is not watching it rolling but is in it, only

observing a range of random and fragmented images of what is clearly city-life. There are

109 Benjamin Buchloh, “In conversation with Martha Rosler”, Zeghered, p. 24

110 Allan Sekula in “Dismanting Modernism, Reinventing Documentary”, quoted at Edwards, p. 9

111 Benjamin Buchloh, “In conversation with Martha Rosler”, Zeghered, p. 42. Also quoted at Edwards, p. 56

45

fleeting images of tarred surfaces, blue sky, traffic, crowds of people, reflections of street life

in shop windows, garbage bins, and yellow cabs. There are the sounds of a city where people

go about their lives, the sound of traffic, the dizzy rhythm of what is clearly New York, and

we can hear a person following the barrel say “Excuse me, please, excuse me” as he is pushing

the barrel. The barrel is rolling through the street, physically exploring the urban surfaces,

almost reminiscent of the way many artists have explored it before, rolling their treadmills,

balls or themselves.112

It is however all an illusion, or is it? It is in fact one of the recent, many would say more

meaningless projects of British artist Steve McQueen, an old hand at working with film and

video as his main medium.113 He is playing the city in the same way as musicians are playing

their musical instruments.

Drumroll combines and appropriates multiple projects and ideas from the past. There are

three cameras mounted at different locations within the drum, one on either side with

another recording through a hole cut into the drum’s wall. The two projections on the left

and on the right spin round in opposite directions, and the central one revolves vertically at

great speed from the sky to the asphalt street and to the artist himself. At the end, McQueen

turns the barrel upright to mark the end of the walk, and the image turns black on one side

and the sky appears on the right.

McQueen’s observation of city-life is detached. It is the barrel that finds and records

everything it encounters on its way. The cameras observe and record everyday life on the

streets, transforming it into vertiginous ironic images. The sound reproduces the noise of the

city. The three-channel projection of the rotating images, filmed from different viewpoints

as it is, confuses the viewer with people and objects constantly slipping out of the viewer’s

grasp.

McQueen’s city as play is a city that is rolling, living its life, running, shouting, crying, playing,

changing in tandem with society. There is no fixed position to observe this play. Like

Baudelaire’s flâneur, McQueen is rolling the barrel through the city in order to experience and

observe it. In random urban art intervention, he discovers laid-out routes and obstacle

112 For example, George Maciunas and Takako Saito, Flux-Treadmill, for “Flux Game Fest”, 19 May 1973 in

80 Wooster Street. Gelatin silver print, 15 x 22.7 cm (Plate 28). Richard Hayman, Bellroll, Street Works, April

1975, on Mercer Street (Plate 29).

113 Steve McQueen, Drumroll, 1998, colour video projection, triptych, 22 min 1 sec. Pamela and Richard

Kramlich and the American Fund, on long-term loan to the Tate Gallery

46

courses through New York, a city of industrial urban planning and architecture, but with a

post-industrial society that is transforming the city to make it more flexible to embody the

play factor.

47

Comparative Illustrations

48

Plate 1

Walker Evans, Subway Portrait, 1938-41,

Gelatin silver print, 16.5 x 20.4 cm.

Collection of MOMA. Photograph

provided by Walker Evans Archive, The

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 2

Humphrey Spender, Woman Cleaning

Pavement, 1937, Gelatin silver print,

25.1 x 36.8 cm. Collection of Bolton

Library and Museum Services.

Photograph provided by Bolton Council.

Plate 3

Humphrey Spender, Catapult Kids, 1937,

Gelatin silver print, 24.1 x 35.2 cm.

Collection of Bolton Library and

Museum Services. Photograph provided

by Bolton Council.

Plate 4

Humphrey Spender, Washing on the Lines,

1937, Gelatin silver print, 23.5 × 34.3

cm. Collection of Yale Centre for British

Art. Photograph provided by Yale

Centre for British Art.

49

Plate 5

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Juvisy, France,

1938, Gelatin silver print, printed 1947,

23.3 x 34.8 cm). Collection of MOMA.

Photograph courtesy Fondation Henri

Cartier-Bresson, Paris

Plate 6

Henri Cartier-Bresson, During the Visit of

George VI of England to Versailles, 1938,

Gelatin silver print, 35.4 x 24 cm.

Collection of MOMA. Photograph

courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-

Bresson, Paris

Plate 7

Nigel Henderson, Stressed Photograph,

c.1950, Gelatin silver print,

30.5 x 50.7 cm. Collection of Tate

Gallery. Photograph courtesy of Nigel

Henderson Estate.

Plate 8

Nigel Henderson, Collage, 1949, Oil paint

and photographs, black and white, on

paper on board, 32.8 x 36.6 cm. Tate

Collection. Photograph courtesy of the

Estate of Nigel Henderson.

50

Plate 9

Nigel Henderson, Untitled (No.50),

c. 1956, Screenprint with collage and ink

on paper (Photographs, gelatin silver

print on paper and ink on paper),

22.7 x 19.8 cm. The Estate of Nigel

Henderson. Photograph courtesy of

Estate of Nigel Henderson. This collage

is much smaller in scale that other similar

works by Nigel Henderson.

Plate 10

Nigel Henderson, Shop front, 1949-53,

Gelatin silver print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. The

Henderson Estate. Photograph provided

by the Henderson Estate.

Plate 11

Nigel Henderson, Distressed door, 1949-

53, Gelatin silver print, 25.4 x 20.3 cm.

The Henderson Estate. Photograph

provided by the Henderson Estate.

Plate 12

Nigel Henderson, Peter Samuels, 1951,

Gelatin silver print, 25.4 x 20.3 cm. The

Henderson Estate. Photograph provided

by the Henderson Estate.

51

Plate 13

Nigel Henderson, Gillian Alixander

Skipping, Chisenhale Road, 1951, Gelatin

silver print, 25.4 x 20.3 cm. Photograph

provided by The Henderson Estate

This work became part of the CIAM

Grid

Plate 14

Nigel Henderson, Chisenhale Road, 1951,

Gelatin silver print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. The

Henderson Estate. Photograph provided

by the Henderson Estate.

This work became part of the CIAM

Grid

Plate 15

Nigel Henderson, Chisenhale Road, 1951,

Gelatin silver print, 20.3 x 25.4cm. The

Henderson Estate. Photograph provided

by The Henderson Estate

This work became part of the CIAM

Grid

Plate 16

Nigel Henderson, Chisenhale Road, 1951,

Gelatin silver print, 21.5 x 16.5 cm. Tate

collection, Reference P79313.

Photograph provided by Tate.

This work became part of the CIAM

Grid

52

Plate 17

Bidonville Mahieddine Grid, 1953, CIAM-Alger, prepared by a group of architects and urbanists and

addressed the problems of squatter settlements of colonized society, was a work This work

received a significant attention at CIAM IX.

Plate 18

Parallel of Life and Art, 1953, Installation

shot of the exhibition. Photograph

provided by Smithsons Family

Collection

Plate 19

From This is tomorrow exhibition

catalogue originally published in 1956.

Reproduced in This is tomorrow, exhibition

catalogue (London: Whitechapel Gallery,

2010)

All the groups provided some essays and

photographs of themselves for the

catalogue. Here, the artists are posing in

a residential street stressing the belief in

the value of street in the urban

environment.

Left to right: Peter Smithson, Eduardo

Paolozzi, Alison Smithson, Nigel

Henderson.

53

Plate 20

Richard Hamilton, Just What Is It That

Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So

Appealing?, 1956, Collage, Papier,

26 x 25 cm, Kunsthalle Tübingen

Gallery, Tübingen, Germany. Image

provided by Kunsthalle Tübingen

Gallery.

Plate 21

Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi and

Alison and Peter Smithson, Patio and

Pavilion, 1956, installation shot.

Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Photograph provided by Smithsons

Family Collection

Plate 22

Roger Mayne, Street Cricket, Clarendon

Cresent, 1957, Gelatin silver print,

20 x 28.7 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Image courtesy Roger Mayne

Plate 23

Roger Mayne, Southam Street, London,

1957, Gelatin silver print, 20 x 28.7 cm.

Collection of Victoria & Albert Museum.

Image courtesy Roger Mayne

54

Plate 24

Roger Mayne, Boy on a Bombsite, Waverley

Walk, Harrow Road area, 1957, Gelatin

silver print, 28.7 x 20 cm. Courtesy of

the artist. Image courtesy Roger Mayne

With play also comes scratches, cuts an

tears

Plate 25

Documerica project. Danny Lyon, Support

the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, New York,

June 1974. Image credit: Danny

Lyon/National Archives and Records

Administration

Plate 26

Documerica project. Dan McCoy, Traffic

congestion in Midtown Manhattan, April

1973. Image credit: Dan

McCoy/National Archives and Records

Administration

Plate 27

Roger Myers, The Wall, 1973, 42 seafoam

green pylons on the north face of 599

Broadway, New York. Photograph

courtesy of Roger Myers.

The piece was taken down during

building repairs in 2002

55

Plate 28

George Maciunas and Takako Saito,

Flux-Treadmill, for “Flux Game Fest”,

19 May 1973 in 80 Wooster Street.

Gelatin silver print, 15 x 22.7 cm. Estate

of Peter Moore. Courtesy of Barbara

Moore. Photograph by Peter Moore

Plate 29

Richard Hayman, Bellroll, Street Works,

April 1975, on Mercer street.

Photograph by Pam Jarvis

Plate 30

Vito Acconci, Following Piece, performed

in New York City between October 3

and 25, 1969. Photographs courtesy of

Vito Acconci

Plate 31

Daniel Buren, Seven Ballets in Manhattan,

work in situ, New York, USA, 27 May-2

June 1975. Photograph courtesy DB &

ADAGP

56

Plate 32

Hans Haaske, Manhattan Real Estate

Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of

May 1, 1971, 142 photos with data

sheets, 2 maps, 6 charts, slide excerpt.

Photograph courtesy Fred Scruton; all

Hans Haacke images courtesy Hans

Haacke

Plate 33

Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974,

Colour photograph, 68 x 99 cm. Estate

of Gordon Matta-Clark, GMCT1051.

Photograph courtesy ARS, NY and

DACS, London, 2007

Plate 34

Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect,

1975, Photograph courtesy of the Estate

of Gordon Matta-Clark and David

Zwirner, New York

Plate 35

Trisha Brown, Man Walking Down the Side

of a Building, performed at 80 Wooster

Street, New York, on 18 April1970.

Walker Art Center Archives. Photograph

by Carol Goodden.

57

Plate 36

Trisha Brown, Women Walking Down a

Ladder, performed at 130 Greene Street,

New York, 1973, on 25 February 1973.

Courtesy Broadway 1602 New York.

Photographs by Babette Mangolte.

58

Catalogue

59

1

Humphrey Spender

Children in the Rubble, Tyneside

Gelatin silver print

24.8 x 36.5 cm

Executed in 1938

Provenance: Yale Centre for British Art

Exhibited: Humphrey Spender’s Humanist Landscapes, Photo-Documents, 1932-1942, Yale

Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1997

Literature: Deborah Frizzell, Humphrey Spender’s Humanist Landscapes, Photo-Documents,

1932-1942 (New Haven: Herlin Press Inc., 1997), reproduced on

unnumbered p. 133

Image credit: Bolton Museum & Archive

This photograph by Humphrey Spender was taken in 1938 as part of his street-life survey

carried out in Bolton, Lancashire. Spender at that time was working as a member of the Mass

60

Observation project. Spender documented daily living situations, environmental decay, street

scenes, and scenes of children at play.

In this photograph, Spender portrayed a quintessentially provincial English world with a

sentimental nostalgia. The photographs give a sense of a place where nothing happens. There

is a something surreal in Spender’s vision of industrial England and in this scene that the

viewer enters. Spender’s Bolton is depressing and disadvantaged, and the tonality of the

image is dark. On his personal experience of life in Bolton, Spender was quoted as saying:

“In general, the experience was alarming – and depressing, because of the evident poverty,

or at least the lack of anything that could be called luxury.”114

There is the temptation to create a narrative from the image. Children playing unsupervised

in this desolate rubble littered space, the mothers possibly busy with their housework, the

fathers at work, and washing hanging on the lines in the background. The children-at-play

transform this lifeless space. Children-at-play Spender often portrayed as part of the local

landscape.

We often do not see the faces of Spender’s subjects in his photographs. His photographs

tend to be a record of what they were doing rather than of them personally. It is clear that

Spender was sympathetic to their daily lives and the hardships they endured. He comes over

as a person with a strong social conscience, concerned for the struggles and plight of the

socially disadvantaged. Spender through his photography contributed to spreading awareness

as to the poverty and social inequalities of the time.

His photographs will often show stark contrasts. In this photograph, the area is evidently

services with electricity evidenced by the electric lighting, but a cart, most probably for coal,

is standing a short distance away. The boy sits and stares at Spender, the girl walks away with

her black coat contrasted against the white washing hanging on the line. In the distance, the

main streets are organized and clean, but the backstreet in the front is straddled by the heaps

114 Mulford, p. 16

61

of rubble where the children play. The chaos of children’s games contrasted with the rows

of houses and the organization in the background as an organic part of their lives. In a place

seemingly dark and dirty, white washing hangs on the line, people still trying to live clean.

Spender used a 35mm Leica camera, shooting wide angle. With Macro lenses not yet in use

at the time, he would have had to get very close to his objects. The subjects portrayed in

Spender’s photographs often do not seem to notice his presence or if they do, they are

seemingly unconcerned about it. This is also surprising considering Spender’s own upper-

middle-class upbringing, something that would not have always gone unnoticed by the then

working-classes in places like Bolton. Spender was however known for sometimes spending

days at a time in the same place allowing people to get used to him, for hiding his camera,

and for taking photos with the camera being held and aiming from the waist.

62

2

Humphrey Spender

Children’s Slide in Queen Park

Gelatin silver print

30.5 x 40.6 cm

Executed in 1937-8

Provenance: Bolton Museum & Archive Service

Exhibited: Worktown People: Photographs from Nothern England, 1937-1938, Bristol, 1982

Literature: Jeremy Mulford, ed., Worktown People: Photographs from Nothern England, 1937-

1938 (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1982)

Image credit: Bolton Museum & Archive

Humphrey Spender’s black and white images are immediately visually emotive with its

minimalist natural style and observational content. A member of the Mass Observation project

in Bolton, Spender portrayed urban settings and landscapes shooting streets, alleyways,

fences and walls, local pubs and markets, and anything in between. On this photograph, he

focuses on the empty playing field and shows the surface of the ground rather than the

63

children at play. It is a sunny autumn day, with the leaves and shadows creating a mosaic on

the ground.

On this sequence of photographs, the slide is high by modern standards, but the children are

seemingly confident, leading one to believe they are familiar with it. The adults watching

(presumably the parents) do not seem overly concerned. The boy and girl are playing the

same games together as opposed to playing with each other with the male watching them

striking a confident pose. His arms are crossed and he seems more of a supervisor than a

participant. He observes the children with all in turn being observed by Spender.

Related works:

Humphrey Spender, Children’s Slide in

Queen Park, 1937-8, Gelatin silver print,

30.5 x 40.6 cm. Collection of Bolton

Library and Museum Services.

Photograph provided by Bolton

Museum & Archive.

Humphrey Spender, Children’s Slide in

Queen Park, 1937-8, Gelatin silver print,

30.5 x 40.6 cm. Collection of Bolton

Library and Museum Services.

Photograph provided by Bolton

Museum & Archive.

64

3

Humphrey Spender

Street life - children playing

Gelatin silver print

24.8 x 36.5 cm

Executed in 1937

Provenance: Bolton Library and Museum Services

Exhibited: Worktown People: Photographs from Nothern England, 1937-1938, Bristol, 1982

Literature: Jeremy Mulford, ed., Worktown People: Photographs from Nothern England, 1937-

1938 (Bristol: Falling Wall Press, 1982), reproduced on p. 35

Tom Harrisson, Britain in the 30’s (London: The Lion and Unicorn Press,

1973), reproduced on unnumbered pp. 36-37

Image credit: Bolton Museum & Archive

Humphrey Spender in 1937 took a sequence of photographs of children playing on this

railway bridge in Bolton. These were taken as part of his street-life survey in Bolton,

65

Lancashire, having joined the Mass-Observation project that same year. These are also

amongst the photographs that have since become a central part of the project’s archive.

There is much that can readily be gleaned from this particular image. In it, Spender managed

to capture the grimy Northern England atmosphere, the melancholic weather with the

gloomy colours so commonly associated with English rain, and the raw surfaces of the

working class industrial town. Small children are playing on the railway bridge with a worn-

down wooden barrier scratched and covered with children’s graffiti on the backdrop. The

railway bridge being a place that will attract children’s interest is to be expected. For most

children there will be something enthralling about steam engines and shunting wagons.

Spender captured the moments of their play with his presence seemingly going unnoticed.

All their attention is directed towards the wooden barrier and the hole in it – a spot and

vantage point to that beyond and for which they seem to compete. In the upper left corner,

barely visible, one can identify barrels which could have been used for beer, or quite possibly

for the tar used during the construction of the roads.

Graffiti happened to be of interest to Mass-Observation where many of the members viewed

it as a form of expressive art. As evidenced by the inhabitants of Bolton, there is still a bridge

at the same location, and it is still covered in graffiti.115

Related works:

Humphrey Spender, Street life - children

playing, 1937, Gelatin silver print,

36.5 x 24.8 cm. Collection of Bolton

Library and Museum Services.

Photograph provided by Bolton

Museum & Archive.

115 Bolton Worktown webpage

66

Humphrey Spender, Street life - children

playing, 1937, Gelatin silver print,

24.8 x 36.5 cm. Collection of Bolton

Library and Museum Services.

Photograph provided by Bolton

Museum & Archive.

Humphrey Spender, Street life - children

playing, 1937, Gelatin silver print,

24.8 x 36.5 cm. Collection of Bolton

Library and Museum Services.

Photograph provided by Bolton

Museum & Archive.

67

4

Nigel Henderson

Peter Samuels

Gelatin silver print

20.3 x 25.4 cm

Executed in 1951

Provenance: Tate collection. Reference P79304

Exhibited: Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art, Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, UK,

2001

Nigel Henderson: Photographs of Bethnal Green 1949-52, Midland Group,

Nottingham; Side Gallery, Newcastle; Camerawork, London, 1978

Literature: Victoria Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art (London: The Elephant

Trust, 2001), reproduced on p. 70

68

Lynda Morris and Terry Morden, curators, Nigel Henderson, introduction,

Nigel Henderson: Photographs of Bethnal Green 1949-52 (Nottingham: Newstead

Publishing Ltd, 1978), reproduced on p. 37

Image credit: Nigel Henderson Estate

This work, executed in 1951, is one of many photographs taken by Nigel Henderson during

his time in Bethnal Green. Following his discharge from Coastal Command in 1945,

Henderson and his wife moved to Bethnal Green, an area of extreme poverty that suffered

severe bombing damage during WW II. Bethnal green and its people became an inspiration,

something that is also evident from his photography. Starting photography as a hobby,

Henderson portrayed the people, the urban surfaces, shop fronts, graffiti, and everyday life

in Bethnal Green as it was.

Children playing on the streets did not avoid Henderson’s attention. The boy pictured, Peter

Samuels was one of the many neighbourhood children that used to roam the streets of

Bethnal Green and was also one of Henderson’s most favourite models. The Hendersons

were certainly familiar with the boy and his family, with a number of comments in Judith

Stephen’s diary referring to the Samuels family, their habits and everyday life.116 Henderson

in turn made photo-observations.

The boy is pictured leaning against a scratched wall covered with children’s graffiti. Around

9 or 10 years of age, his shoes and clothing comes over as worn, considering the culture and

circumstances of the time quite possibly passed down from an older sibling and quite

possibly also his only set of clothes. The image carries with it an impression of him possibly

taking a break from his play but his gaze does leave the observer with the impression that he

has not totally distanced him from the street-activity. There is a contrast between the

innocence of the boy and the scarred filthy environment that surrounds him. The

116 Judith Stephen, Henderson’s wife, used to keep a diary where she penned down her observations of the

neighborhood, a habit most likely related to her own professional activity. She assisted with a sociology course

based in Bethnal Green titled ‘Discover your Neighbors’, a course that was aimed at creating an awareness of

the culture in Bethnal Green.

69

photograph does not carry with it a sense of desperation, but rather that of a boy waiting for

something to happen. There is a sense of expectation, a quality that may be interpreted as a

symbol of hope.

Henderson’s photographs of children’s street-play was to become a source of inspiration for

other artists such as Alison and Peter Smithson who eventually used some of his works in

developing their own urban planning and design concepts which placed considerable

emphasis on the local environment and the importance of streets as an extension of the

house. These ideas, first presented at the International Congresses of Modern Architecture in 1956,

were then further developed within Team 10, a then influential architectural group that made

a considerable impact in shifting the architectural thinking.

70

5

Nigel Henderson

Bag-wash

Gelatin silver print

20.3 x 25.4 cm

Executed in 1949-53

Provenance: Tate collection. Reference P79305

Exhibited: Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art, Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury,

Suffolk, 2001

Literature: Victoria Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art (London: The Elephant

Trust, 2001), published to accompany the exhibition for Gainsborough’s

House, reproduced on p.74

Image credit: Nigel Henderson Estate

This photograph of a shop window is one of a series of Nigel Henderson’s works executed

over the period 1949-1953. Henderson, a member of the Independent Group, with his wife

71

Judith Stephen moved to Bethnal Green, London in 1948. Stephen at that time assisted with

organising a sociology course targeted at local professionals to help them understand the

neighborhood and the people’s needs in services. Inspired by the street life, Henderson

photographed everyday life of his neighborhood and its people.

Henderson at that time also experimented with different techniques, including collages. This

photograph may appear to be a collage of different images, but it is in fact no more but a

photograph of what was the common commercial practice of the time, for shopkeepers to

advertise their merchandise in their shop-windows. The result of this particular shopkeeper’s

efforts however came over as and was captured by Henderson as resembling a collage.

Visible in the windows are some commercials that were obviously at some point painted or

attached to the glass but subsequently partially removed i.e. “Laundry”, “Bag Wash” and

“Household Goods”. The windows show a number of cracks and scratches, very much

reminiscent of the poverty so prevalent in many of the most affected post-war areas. This,

coupled with the grid created by the window frames, increases the sense of fragmentation.

The photograph itself has over time suffered some damage in the form of bends and tears,

qualities that somehow seem to only enhance the effect of post-war Britain’s scratched and

scarred urban surfaces.

72

6

Nigel Henderson

Untitled No. 8 (Shattered Glass)

Photographs, gelatin silver print on paper and ink on paper

121 x 121 cm

Executed in 1959

Provenance: Tate collection, Liverpool. Reference T12443

Exhibited: On display at Tate Liverpool

Literature: Victoria Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art (London: The Elephant

Trust, 2001), reproduced on p. 70

Image credit: Nigel Henderson Estate

73

This work is one of the many collages produced by Nigel Henderson at the time when he

still lived and worked in Bethnal Green. This collage is made up of fragments of black and

white photographs combined into an abstract pattern resembling what most will interpret as

an aerial photograph or landscape map. Henderson may arguably have been inspired by aerial

photography and the aerial views of the world which he grew accustomed to during his

wartime service as an aviator. The collage is partially over-painted in black ink. The surface

comes over as scratched, resembling rough urban surfaces, broken glass, or the texture of

walls and doors.

Henderson first started experimenting with collages in the 1930s. He was familiar with the

Surrealist collages he encountered at Guggenheim Jeune where his mother helped Peggy

Guggenheim run the gallery and where two of his own collages were also on exhibition

before the war. He returned to collages after the war, some of which were on exhibition at

the Institute of Contemporary Art in 1954. Frank Whitford, the curator of Nigel Henderson’s

exhibition in Kettle’s Yard in 1977, noted that Henderson in his practice came close to what

American artists and photographers were producing at that time, and compared Henderson’s

works with that to be expected within Abstract Expressionism.117

117 Whitford, unnumbered p. 10

74

7

Nigel Henderson

Head of a Man

Photographic collage on paper mounted on board

159.7 x 121.6 cm

Executed in 1956

Provenance: Tate collection. Reference T01939

Exhibited: This is Tomorrow, Whitechapel Art Gallery, August–September 1956 (part of

exhibit No. 6)

Literature: Victoria Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art (London: The Elephant

Trust, 2001), reproduced on p. 122

Image credit: Courtesy The Estate of Nigel Henderson

75

This large collage was one of three works executed by Nigel Henderson in 1956 for the ‘Patio

and Pavilion’ installation. This installation formed part of the This is Tomorrow exhibition

organised by Whitechapel gallery in 1956. The exhibition was aimed at exploring the

collaboration and integration of art and architecture. The exhibition included twelve

‘environments’, each prepared by different group of artists. Head of Man was the central part

of the ambiguous installation ‘Patio and Pavilion’ that was organized by Henderson in

collaboration with Eduardo Paolozzi and Alison and Peter Smithson. For this installation,

they constructed a symbolic wooden structure (Pavilion), a symbolic habitat representing

private urban space. This structure was surrounded by an area covered with sand (Patio) as

being symbolic of public urban space. Both these spaces were filled with symbolic objects

intended as symbols of what we encounter in everyday life i.e. trees as representing plant life,

a wheel representing machinery, and rocks for stability.

Installed inside a Pavilion, Head of Man was intended to be symbolic of man, the user of the

space. The figure looks contorted and destructed, very typical for post-war representations

of the human body. Henderson may arguably have been influenced by both his own

traumatic war-time experiences, having served as a pilot at Coastal Command from 1939 to

1945, and by other artists with whose work he is thought to have been familiar. There is

some evidence of Henderson at that time having had some exposure to Dubuffet’s work in

Paris.

On closer inspection, it is evident that the work is in fact made up of a variety of materials.

The heavily textured figure is collaged of a mixture of many small photographic fragments

of landscapes, stones, and leaves. The technique used in its construction involved the initial

use of a smaller collage head which was then photographed and enlarged, some areas of it

then painted, and then again photographed and enlarged with additional collage elements

added. The ultimate result is one which Victoria Walsh has quite aptly described as a

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“surrealist game of finding faces in puzzle”, a game that involves the viewer and reconnects

the Head with the surrounding landscape.118

The most accurate description of what the figure was intended to represent is probably to be

found from its creator. In 1975, Henderson explained it in the following terms to his friend

Colin St. John Wilson (who in fact bought the collage from Henderson at some point in the

1960’s): “The image largely filled one wall of a rather diagrammatic hut or shed which stood

in a compound. This was to suggest a working shed or even a ‘summerhouse’ where a Head

worker might cultivate his intelligence and imagination or a Hand worker his ‘garden’. Each

would impose his presence. The visor-like element was to symbolise this Head projection or

Head protection role. The face was heavily textured to underline the association with hide

or bark and the bust/shoulders adumbrated with bits of photo-material like stone or leaf to

further his association with nature.”119

Related images:

Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi and

Alison Smithson, Patio and Pavilion, 1956,

installation shot. Whitechapel Art

Gallery, London. Photograph provided

by Smithsons Family Collection

118 Victoria Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art (London: The Elephant Trust, 2001), p. 119

119 From Walsh, p. 118

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8

Alison and Peter Smithson

Grille pour le C.I.A.M. d’Aix-en-Provence (Urban Re-identification Grid)

Collage, photographs (by Nigel Henderson), ink on paper and papiers colles

83.5 x 275.5 cm

Executed in 1952-53

Provenance: Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Georges

Exhibited: Documenta 10, Kassel, 1997

CIAM IX, Aix-en-Provence, 1953

Literature: Helena Webster, ed., Modernism Without Rhetoric: Essays on the works of Alison

and Peter Smithson (London: Academy Editions, 1997), reproduced on p. 46

Dirk van den Heuvel, Team 10: 1953-81, in search of a utopia of the present

(Rotterdam: NAi, 2005), reproduced on pp. 30-31

Victoria Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art (London: The Elephant

Trust, 2001), published to accompany the exhibition for Gainsborough’s

House, reproduced on pp. 38-39

Roy Kozlovsky, “Urban Play: Intimate Space and Postwar Subjectivity”,

Vittoria Di Palma, Diana Periton, Marina Lathouri, ed., Intimate Metropolis:

Urban Subjects in the Modern City (London and New York: Routledge, 2009),

reproduced on p. 200

Image credit: Centre Pompidou

This Urban Re-identification grid by Alison and Peter Smithson was presented at CIAM IX

– Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (Eng. International Congresses of Modern

Architecture) – in Aix-en-Provence in 1953. Founded in Switzerland in 1928 by some of the

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most prominent architects of the time, the organisation can be credited with arranging a

series of congresses held around Europe. One of the primary objectives was to encourage

debate on many of the questions surrounding urban living, landscape, space and urban

design. The 1953 conference, also the first one where younger members could participate,

was arranged around the theme of Habitat (La charte de l’habitat) as a living environment.

Though CIAM was disbanded in 1959, many of the ideas developed during the Congress’s

work had a lasting impact on the shape of cities all over the world.

The grid as a way of presenting the ideas and materials was typical for CIAM.120 Smithsons

borrowed this form; however, instead of following suggested notions of dwelling, work,

transportation and recreation commonly used in presenting and comparing different modern

town planning projects, the Smithsons explored it as House, Street, District and City. Their

provocative presentation may well not have provided for careful analysis, but it did provide

for what can be viewed as a poetic statement. Their patterns of association supported their CIAM

declaration that a community “should be built up of hierarchy of associational elements […]

(the House, the Street, the District, the City)”, these latter elements being the aspects of real

life that had fallen “through the mesh of the four functions (housing, work, recreation and

traffic)”.121

The Smithsons incorporated some of Nigel Henderson’s most recognizable photographs of

Bethnal Green into a grid. The Grille consists of eight vertical panels, divided into two

functional parts that play with each other. In the left-handed part “House – Street –

Relationship” photographs of children playing in slums are collaged with a bright human-

like figure, with the accompanying text to the photographs presenting the Smithsons’ own

reading of the photographs: “The street is an extension of the house, in it children learn for

the first time of the world outside the family”.122 The right-hand part “House – Street –

120 The grid was developed in 1947 by Le Corbusier while preparing for the C.I.A.M VII under Le Corbusier’s

leadership. Referred to by Catherine Blame in Van den Heuvel, p. 18, and Highmore, p. 283

121 Quoted at Webster, p. 46

122 Text accompanying the top left image of the Grille

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District – City” shows the Smithsons’ housing project as presented for the Golden Line

competition in 1952, a project that was in fact never realized, together with an image of a

street decorated for the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, an event that reflected a

changing Britain. The project emphasises the use of the space in-between, and suggests a

new urban planning with a focus on a local environment instead of linear street planning.

The Smithsons to a certain extend changed the experience of Henderson’s photographs,

framing his works in a social and architectural context. They saw the self-sufficiency of street

life, in his photographs of the working class neighbourhood of Bethnal Green. They aimed

to explain how people identify themselves with their environment and used the images of

children playing on the streets to present their view on urban planning. They emphasised the

immediate surroundings of the dwelling, the unobserved gaps between some architectural

developments and a play of a street network with the daily life of inhabitants and their social

needs. They not only saw the world of childhood as a part of the world, but also used the

unique needs of children to play to illustrate social needs of the whole society.

The Smithsons opened a new discussion of urban planning. Their understanding of the built

environment through the notion of social practice caused a radical shift in the modern

movement’s conception of dwelling. The Smithsons were subsequently invited by CIAM to

establish a new body, Team 10, to prepare an agenda for the next CIAM meeting. Their

concepts proved to be well received and recognized judged by the accounts of Team 10.

Related images:

Grille pour le C.I.A.M. d’Aix-en-Provence,

installation view. Photograph provided by black

dog publishing.

80

Grille pour le C.I.A.M. d’Aix-en-Provence, detail.

Photograph provided by black dog publishing.

81

9

Roger Mayne

Goalie, Brindley Road, off Harrow Road

Gelatin silver print

28.7 x 20 cm

Executed in 1956

Provenance: courtesy of Roger Mayne

Exhibited: URBAN PLAY: Art as regenerative force is the first exhibition of the work

Literature: Ray Gosling (introduction), Roger Mayne: Photographs (London: Jonathan Cape,

2001), reproduced on p. 55

Image credit: Courtesy of Mary Evans Picture Library

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Roger Mayne’s name is usually associated with his extended observation of 1950’s street life

in the then Southam Street, North Kensington, London. One of the poorest working-class

areas of post-war London, Southam Street was a place of disadvantaged Londoners living in

a slum still showing the physical scars of 5 years of bombing.

This image, taken in 1956, was very typical of Mayne’s work. In it, Mayne managed to capture

one of those fleeting moments of urban childhood. A street scene with a boy playing football,

at the instant when the image was captured attempting to make a dramatic save. All his

attention is focussed on the ball. The image however captures more than just a young boy at

play and his dramatic game. It also highlights the grim reality of post war 1950’s Britain. A

visual image, the observable and underlying contrasts give the photograph a sense of

darkness. On the one hand, the image draws the viewer into the boy’s game and what the

viewer anticipates as a painful fall, scratched knees, and possibly torn clothes, but at the same

time there is the inescapable sign of poverty, worn-down surfaces, and architectural decay.

In most of Mayne’s photographs the children seems to have been aware of them being

photographed, in many instances actually posing with him, not trying to escape the camera.

In this picture, the boy comes over as either oblivious of Mayne or just more concerned with

his game than the photographer recorded his game into history. Emotionally involved with

his subjects, Mayne captured the spirit of street life, recording as he did the simple pleasures

of childhood, children playing on ‘their’ street, their run-down houses in the background.

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10

Gordon Matta-Clark

Realty Properties: Fake Estates – “Jamaica Curb,” Block 10142, Lot 15

Twenty-for gelatin silver prints, collaged, deed, and three site maps.

Collage: 11.4 s 365.8 cm. Deed: 36.5 x 21.6 cm. Maps: 27.9 x 35.6 cm each.

Executed c1974 (assembled posthumously, 1992)

Provenance: Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark

Exhibited: The Grand Domestic Revolution – User’s Manual, De Rooie Rat Gallery, Utrecht,

2011-12

Odd Lots, Queens Museum of Art, 2005

Reality Properties: Fake Estates and Other Architectural Musings, Rhana Hoffman

Gallery, Chicago, 1995

Reality Properties: Fake Estates and Other Architectural Musings, Holly Solomon

Gallery, New York, 1994

Retrospective of Gordon Matta-Clark, IVAM Centro Julio Gonzalez in Valencia,

Spain, 1992

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Literature: Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi and Frances Richard, ed.; essays by Jeffrey

Kroessler and Frances Richard, Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake

Estates (New York: Cabinet Books, 2005), reproduced on p. 11

Corinne Diserens, ed., Gordon Matta-Clark (London: Phaidon, c2003 2004),

reproduced on pp. 150-151

Gloria Moure, Gordon Matta-Clark: Works and Collected Writings (Barcelona:

Ediciones Poligrafa, 2006), reproduced on pp. 354-355

Elisabeth Susaman, ed., Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 2007), reproduced on pp. 100-101

Image credit: Emilio Moreno for De Rooie Rat Gallery, installation view

Realty Properties: Fake Estates – “Jamaica Curb,” Block 10142, Lot 15 is one of fourteen collages

that represent the properties purchased by Gordon Matta-Clark in 1974. This particular slot

is a skinny part of land measuring one foot by ninety foot, bought at one of the New York

City Auctions.

Although Gordon Matta-Clark trained to be an architect, he never practiced as such because

of the economic and urban decay; he eventually used urban decay as his medium and subject

matter. The investment in these ridiculous microscopic properties is highly irrational

revealing city gaps and untenable but own able spaces. From Matta-Clark’s comments and

interviews it can be understood that the property itself was intended to be an inherent part

of the artwork. In an interview with Times he remarked that: “The artworks will consist of

three parts: a written documentation of the piece of land, including exact dimensions and

location and perhaps a list of weeds growing there; a full-scale photograph of the property,

and the property itself. The first two parts will be displayed in a gallery, and buyers of the art

will purchase the deed to the land as well”.123 Matta-Clark photographed the property,

photographs which together with the maps, deeds and other documentation ended up as

part of the property archive.

123 Matta-Clark in an interview to Times. Quoted by Johung, pp. 33-34

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All indications are that Matta-Clark did not have a clearly defined idea as to what to do with

the properties and the documentation. There is some evidence that point to him at some

time entertaining the idea of it being assembled as a collective art project, something he did

in fact discuss with the Anarchitecture group. Matta-Clark, eventually unable to pay the

property taxes on the lots, sold the archive box to his friend Norman Fisher, and the lots

themselves were transferred back to the city. The materials started to pass from one owner

to another. Following Fisher’s death in 1977, the box with the material moved on to the Tina

Girouard, the executrix of his estate, who in 1980 returned them to Jane Crawford, Matta-

Clark’s widow. Crawford in 1992 proceeded to assemble the archive in collages for Matta-

Clark’s retrospective. In 2003, Cabinet magazine researched the location of and in 2005

eventually repurchased those lots. A part of the artwork is site-specific, it cannot be exhibited

in a gallery or be relocated, and the collages only refer the viewer to a part of land in New

York.

There are fourteen collages, and the fifteenth is incomplete, because the slot is impossible to

photograph. The collages are however spread between different collections all over the

world. There may be a number of questions around Matta-Clark’s work. He did not put the

collages together himself, and there is in fact no reason to believe that he ever intended to

assemble them. Even assuming that it might have been his intention, then it is still unclear

as to what they would have looked like. Another point to consider is the fact that over quite

a considerable period, the sites themselves were not in possession of those in possession of

the archive. The artwork in the original state was effectively missing. Despite these questions,

the collages are still recognized and defined as his work. Following the repurchase by the

Cabinet magazine, Matta-Clark’s work together with a number of other collages was included

in a New York exhibition split into two parts. Odd Lots in the Queens Museum of Art

presented the Matta-Clark documentation, with the second part in The White Columns made

up of artworks by artists who responded to Matta-Clark’s project. It included bus tours for

incite inspections of the properties.

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11

Gordon Matta-Clark

Realty Properties: Fake Estates – “Maspeth Onions,” Block 2406, Lot 148

For gelatin silver prints, collaged, deed, map, and overview.

Collage: 25.4 x 45.7 cm. Deed: 36.5 x 20.3 cm. Map: 20.3 x 25.4 cm. Overview: 20.3 x 25.4 cm

Executed c1973 (assembled posthumously, 1992)

Provenance: Collection of David and Monica Zwirner, New York

Exhibited: Odd Lots, Queens Museum of Art, 2005

Reality Properties: Fake Estates and Other Architectural Musings, Rhana Hoffman

Gallery, Chicago, 1995

Reality Properties: Fake Estates and Other Architectural Musings, Holly Solomon

Gallery, New York, 1994

Retrospective of Gordon Matta-Clark, IVAM Centro Julio Gonzalez in Valencia,

Spain, 1992

Literature: Jeffrey Kastner, Sina Najafi and Frances Richard, ed.; essays by Jeffrey

Kroessler and Frances Richard, Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fake

Estates (New York: Cabinet Books, 2005), reproduced on p. 14

Gloria Moure, Gordon Matta-Clark: Works and Collected Writings (Barcelona:

Ediciones Poligrafa, 2006), reproduced on p. 352

Stephen Walker, Gordon Matta-Clark: Art, Architecture and the Attack on

Modernism (London: I. B. Tauris, 1988), reproduced on p. 136

Image credit: Courtesy David Zwirner

87

Realty Properties: Fake Estates – “Maspeth Onions,” Block 2406, Lot 148 is one of fourteen collages

assembled by the late Gordon Matta-Clark’s widow Jane Crawford. Crawford in 1992

compiled these from Matta-Clark’s original documentation. The collage includes two

photographs of a tiny slot, in fact just a corner of a piece of land adjacent to another property,

the deed, and an area-map.

Matta-Clark in 1974 invested his own money in several of these unusable and hardly

reachable slots in New York. Those parts of land, unusable and odd, became part of his

artwork, mocking the idea of private property, wasted and ridiculous city spaces, denying the

traditional use of the land and pointing on the strangeness of property demarcation lines.

Discussing this project, Matta-Clark commented in an interview: “Buying [these properties]

was my own take on the strangeness of existing property demarcation line. Property is so all-

pervasive. Everyone’s notion of ownership is determined by the use factor.”124

The collage was widely exhibited together with some of Matta-Clark’s other works.

124 In an interview to Liza Bear, quoted in Walker, p. 141

88

12

Trisha Brown, filmed by Babette Mangolte

Roof Piece (alternative title: Roof and Fire Piece)

Colour film transferred to video

31:38 minutes

Executed in 1973

Provenance: Courtesy Trisha Brown Dance Company and ARTRIX (video)

Exhibited: Trisha Brown: So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing,

Minneapolis, 2008

Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, Tate Modern, 2001

Literature: Hendel Teicher, ed., Trisha Brown: dance and art in dialogue, 1961-2001

(Andover, Mass.: Addison Gallery of American Art; London: MIT Press

[distributor], c2002)

Rene Block, New York – Downtown Manhattan. Soho (Berlin: Akademie der

Kunste and Berliner Festwochen, 1976)

Lydia Yee, Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark: Poineers of the

Downtown Scene New York 1970s (Munich: Prestel in association with the

Barbican Art Gallery, 2011)

Peter Eleey, ed., Trisha Brown: So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I

Have Stopped Dancing (Minneapolis: Bolger, 2008), published on the occasion

of an exhibition at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, still reproduced on p. 16

Image credit: Courtesy of Trisha Brown Dance Company

89

Details of the performance:

Length: Approx. 30 minutes

Choreography: Trisha Brown

Set design: Trisha Brown

Date: Initially performed on 11 May 1971 on 53 Wooster Street at 381 Lafayette,

New York, NY. No photography or documentation available

Performed again and widely publicized on 24 June 1973, and 1 July 1973 at

420 West Broadway to 35 White Street, New York, NY

Remounted in 2011 on the High Line in New York, NY

Remounted on 6 April 2013 in Getty Center, Los Angeles, California, as part

of The Retrospective Project

Performers: 1971: 12 dance students, names unknown

1973: Carmen Beauchat, Trisha Brown, Douglas Dunn, Tina Girouard,

Caroline Goodden, David Gordon, Nancy Green, Susan HArris, Elsi

Miranda, Emmett Murray, Sylvia Palacios, Eve Poling, Sarah Rudner,

Nanette Seivert, and Valda Setterfield

2011 and 2013: Trisha Brown Dance Company members, names unknown

Costumes: Red long-sleeved shirts and red sweat pants

This film presents a widely recognised dance installation choreographed by Trisha Brown on

a number of rooftops in Downtown Manhattan and filmed by Babette Mangolte in 1973.

Only 30 minutes in duration, the performance involved several dancers positioned along a

number of Manhattan rooftops who in silence transmitted improvised movements from one

to another and from rooftop to rooftop. Initially staged in 1971, only a very limited number

of visitors with access to a number of Manhattan rooftops could actually see the

performance. Repeated in 1973, it received considerable attention and became one of

Brown’s most recognised works.

Trisha Brown is a widely acclaimed choreographer who started her career in New York in

1961. She studied under and later participated in the performances of artists who

experimented with performing in unusual spaces and constantly challenged the limits of

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choreography. With her 1973 work Roof Piece, Brown participated in the performance

initiating the movements. Babette Mangolte was later commenting on the making of Roof

Piece (July 2007): “The movement was improvised by Trisha Brown facing south and seen by

the dancers closer to her facing North. Trisha was sending the movement down the line to

Carmen Beuchat at the receiving end on White Street. After 15 minutes, Trisha ducked below

the ledge of the roof signalling to all the dancers on their rooftops that it was time for them

to face South to be ready to transmit the movement originated by Carmen Beuchat on White

Street back to Trisha Brown on the receiving end of the line. The total piece was two times

fifteen minutes or thirty minutes plus duck-time.” 125

In shooting the 1973 performance, Mangolte installed three cameras at different rooftop

locations along the performing line. Apart from filming the performance, she also shot some

black and white photographs. Published in the New York Times, one of the photographs

enjoys iconic status with frequent subsequent reproduction in different print media. What

Brown attempted to achieve with the piece is probably best summed up by Mangolte where

she in discussing the Roof Piece said (July 2007): “For Trisha the choreography was testing

how improvised movements appear at a distance and are transformed by transmission by a

succession of dancers mimicking with variation what they see and how what has been

transmitted at one end is different when received at the other end. The dance tested the

erosion of movement by transmission as in telegraphy. It also was about revealing the majesty

and privacy of downtown roofs and the sculptural effect of its water towers.”126

As part of The Retrospective Project, the Roof Piece was once again performed at the High

Line area in New York in 2011. This time however, the piece was performed in a very

different space, and the viewers had to move around the space to see every dancer. The piece

saw another performance at the Getty Center, Los Angeles in 2013. Babette Mangolte’s name

125 Babette Mangolte on her official webpage, accessed 8 September 2013:

<http://www.babettemangolte.com>

126 Babette Mangolte on her official webpage

91

is just as much associated with the piece as that of Brown’s. The 2011 performance in High

Line was in fact, like 40 years earlier, again filmed by Mangolte.127 In 2013, the performance

was appropriated for an art centre for the retrospective of the Trisha Brown Dance

Company.

Related images:

Invitation post for Roof Piece, 1973,

55.9 x 43.2 cm. Collection of Trisha Brown.

Image courtesy Trisha Brown

Babette Mangolte, Roof Piece, 1973, gelatin

silver print, 40.6 x 50. 8 cm. Courtesy

Broadway 1602 New York.

Performance views of Trisha Brown Dance

Company performing Trisha Brown, Roof Piece,

on and around The High Line, New York,

9 June 2011. Photograph provided by 16 Miles

Performance views of Trisha Brown Dance

Company performing Trisha Brown, Roof Piece,

on and around The High Line, New York,

9 June 2011. Photograph provided by 16 Miles

127 Babette Mangolte, Roof Piece on the High Line, 2012, 35 minutes, DVD

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13

Martha Rosler

The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems

Forty-five gelatin silver prints of text and image mounted on twenty-four backing boards.

30 x 60 cm each

Edition of 5

Executed in 1974–75, assembled in 1976

Provenance: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (Edition No. 2 of 5)

Exhibited: Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007

The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, Vin&Aprithistoriska Museet,

Stock, 2002

Netherlands Foto Inst, Rotterdam, 2000

Inst.d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne, Vienna, 1999

Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1998-99

Literature: Catherine de Zeghered, ed., Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World

(Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press, 1998), reproduced on pp. 40-41, 56-

61

93

Martha Rosler, Martha Rosler / 3 Works: critical essays on photography and

photographs (Halifax, N.S.: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design,

c1981), reproduced pp. 11-57

Steve Edwards, Martha Rosler: The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems

(London: Afterall, 2012), reproduced pp. 21-52

Image Credit: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (Edition No. 2 of 5),

installation view

The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems is a complex photo and text piece with the

photographs taken by Marta Rosler over two sessions during December 1974 and January

1975, with the photographs subsequently collaged into a grid in 1976. Twenty-one image of

corners, streets, and alleyways littered with booze bottles and waste and frontal views of a

number of Manhattan stores are collaged together with twenty-four text panels with

typewritten ironic words, phrases, or American idioms commonly used in referring to

alcoholics and drunks, the state of intoxication, or symptoms of alcoholism. These include

words and phrases such as:

loopy – groggy – boozy – tight – steamed up – bent – folded – flooey

muddled – fuddled – flustered – lushy – sottish – maudlin

stewed – boiled – potted – corned – pickled – preserved – canned – fried to the hat

comatose – unconscious – passed out – knocked out – laid out – out of the picture –

out like a light

lush – wino – rubbydub – inebriate – alcoholic – barrelhouse bum

drunk – derelict – bum

THE BOWERY – in – two – inadequate – descriptive – system

For the observer, the overall impression of the work is one of regression, hopelessness, and

decay. Rosler, however, followed an interesting approach in how she approached the

neighbourhood and the underlying theme. The observer can recognise and sense the

engagement of the inhabitants with their urban space on the one hand, and the interaction

between the different inhabitants of that urban space with each other on the other. This is

exceptional considering there being no representation of the inhabitants other that what is

expressed or what they leave behind. She deliberately avoided capturing the inhabitants in

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person, only representing the poverty but in a different way. Originally intended as a gallery-

piece, the work is presented in a documentary mode. It offers a stark glimpse of the dark

side of the neighbourhood, acting as a mirror of society but the reflection being what the

inhabitants are trying to avoid.

Rosler captured the connection of the homeless and drunk, the deprived, those we usually

pass with just a glance, with the urban environment they also call home. There is an

overwhelming presence of absence, absence of people and total absence of warmth and

empathy. The work was intended as a “structural critique” but “without the high drama of

human actors”. In an interview with Benjamin Buchloh, Rosler explained that: “the Bowery

was in a sense genealogical […] it looked back to a history that was decrepit and said, there

is a reason for its decrepitude, but it’s a mistake to throw this away. It is not simply a set of

dismissive quotations, […] and yet it is a set of rough quotations of style, for want of better

word. It also demanded […] a new look at the urban at the depth of New York’s fiscal crisis.

The work intended a structural critique, yet without high drama of human actors. Only banks,

storefronts and empty bottles.”128

Related images:

The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, detail. Photograph provided by Whitney Museum of

American Art, New York.

128 Benjamin Buchloh, “In conversation with Martha Rosler”, Zeghered, p. 42

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14

Steve McQueen

Drumroll

Colour video projection, triptych

22 min 1 sec

Executed in 1998

Provenance: Pamela and Richard Kramlich and the American Fund, on long-term loan to

the Tate Gallery

Exhibited: Steve McQueen, Retrospective at Schaulager in Basel, 2013

Steve McQueen, Sala Mendoza in Caracas, Institute of Contemporary Art in

Cape Town, Museu de Arte Moderna in San Paulo, Museo Rufino Tamayo

in Mexico City, 2000-2001

Steve McQueen, ICA, London, and Kunsthale, Zurich, 1999

Literature: Gerrie van Nord, ed., Steve MvQueen (London: ICA, 1999), reproduced on

p. 43

Thomas Mulcaire, Steve McQueen, exhibition catalogue (Caracas: Sala

Mendoza, 2000), reproduced on unnumbered pp. 24-26

Image credit: Courtesy of the artist

A British artist, Steve McQueen for the most part works with film and video with the length

of his works varying from anything between 54 seconds to 70 minutes. McQueen was

awarded Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize in 1999 for his work Drumroll. This work, a

multiple image colour video, involved the recording of images generated by three cameras

installed at different points within the confines of an oil barrel rolled down a New York

street. Two of the cameras were mounted filming through the ends of the drum with another

positioned so as to record through a hole cut into the side. With the one camera recording

96

reflections in the windows, another captured roads, cars and traffic, with the last camera

recording the artist dressed in pink, the sky, and the road surface as the barrel rolls. With all

three videos recorded and projected simultaneously, the result is a triptych of moving images.

McQueen’s view was that the placing of the cameras was irrelevant arguing their unusual

positioning and the “film language” as having been sufficient to question the narrative and

“look at things in a different way.129

This work itself is very much camera-centred with the human presence reduced to the

reflections of the artist in some of the shop windows and in the fleeting images of the legs

of pedestrians. McQueen also recorded the sound of the drum rolling on the street and the

noise of the city. The viewer can hear traffic, noise, people talking, and at one point even

McQueen’s voice saying “excuse me, please” as he is trying to pass through the crowd. The

images are constantly rotating, and watching them induces a feeling of dizziness, as if the

viewer is also an ‘occupant’ in the drum, rolling down the street exploring the urban surface.

129 An interview by Patricia Bickers in Art Monthly, Dec 96 – Jan 97, quoted in Thomas Mulcaire, Steve McQueen,

exhibition catalogue (Caracas: Sala Mendoza, 2000), pp. 62, 65

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Glossary

CIAM Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne. Eng. International

Congresses of Modern Architecture

Flâneur Originating from the French flâneur – ‘saunter, lounger, stroller, loafer’.

Flaneur – an urban walker, a man who saunters around observing society. Originally coined

by French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) at a time of considerable urban expansion

and associated with the era of modernity, to walk the city in order to experience it, to observe

the city, to walk for walking’s sake.

Habitat Tracing its origins to the Latin habitare, to ‘possess’, ‘inhabit’, or to ‘dwell’.

Originally used in referring to the natural home or environment of animals or plants. Usually

referring to the environment in which an organism or group normally lives or occurs i.e.

jungles, mountains, deserts, water-environments or in modern times in urban environments.

In the context of cities as environments of human habitation, CIAM has adopted habitat in

referring to cities as environments that could accommodate the ‘total and harmonious

spiritual, intellectual, and physical fulfillment’ of its inhabitants.

Photogram In historical context referring to pictures produced with photographic

materials, but without the use of a camera. However a term to which different meanings have

been ascribed by different artists i.e. Nigel Henderson who used it in referring to his ‘stressed

photographs’ – experimenting with the printing process, he distorted (or ‘stressed’) the image

during the printing process with the effect of the scene coming over as distorted, as if viewed

in a distorted mirror.

Urbis, urbs Originating from old Latin and used in referring to urban areas such as cities

and towns.

98

Appendix 1. Venue

Curve Gallery has been selected and will make for a perfect setting for an eclectic show such

as URBAN PLAY: Art as Regenerative Force. The topic and show-content can accommodate

the integration of multiple artists and two art forms, photography and video. Additionally it

can also address a wide audience. Curve is part of the Barbican center, a large multi-art center

in the heart of the City of London. Built during the 1960s and the 1970s in an area with a

rich cultural background that did not escape the devastation of WW II, it is constructed of

concrete blocks and glass, overall of cold appearance, and a good example of Brutalist

architecture in London. It is however a landmark that reaches a diverse public with a wide

range of different art-forms.

99

Appendix 2. The Right of Children to Play

Play is human behaviour that has entered the economic and political domains. As far as play

by children is concerned, ‘play’ has gained international and national legal status and

recognition as yet unknown and un-catered for in the history of human civilization.

As late back as 1959, Article 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child stated that: “The child

shall have full opportunity for play and recreation. […] society and the public authorities

shall endeavour to promote the enjoyment of this right”. The 1959 declaration was followed

by the rights enshrined in Article 31 of the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child

recognizing the right of children to play as an internationally recognized and enforceable

fundamental right:130

The States Parties to the present Convention […] have agreed as follow:

1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and

recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural

life and the arts.

2. States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural

and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for

cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

It is, however, a fundamental right which calls for more than just recognition by signatory

states, but in fact calls for a paradigm shift in the way governments think and cater for

children, budget for resources and facilities, develop spaces and view the concept of play,

and govern in general. General comment to the Convention sets out the factors considered

necessary for an optimum environment creating the context for the realization of the above

rights:131

130 United Nations. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989, entry into force

2 September 1990.

131 Paragraph 32 of the General comment No. 17 (2013) on the right of the child to rest, leisure, play, recreational activities,

cultural life and the arts, CRC/C/GC/17, Adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child of United Nations

at its sixty-second session (14 Jan – 1 Feb 2013).

100

Children have a spontaneous urge to play and participate in recreational activities and will

seek out opportunities to do so in the most unfavourable environments. However, certain

conditions need to be assured, in accordance with children’s evolving capacities, if they are

to realize their rights under article 31 to the optimum extent. As such, children should have:

An environment sufficiently free from waste, pollution, traffic and other physical hazards to

allow them to circulate freely and safely within their local neighbourhood;

Accessible space and time for play, free from adult control and management;

Space and opportunities to play outdoors unaccompanied in a diverse and challenging

physical environment, with easy access to supportive adults, when necessary;

Opportunities to experience, interact with and play in natural environments and the animal

world;

Opportunities to invest in their own space and time so as to create and transform their world,

using their imagination and languages;

Opportunities to explore and understand the cultural and artistic heritage of their

community, participate in, create and shape it;

Opportunities to participate with other children in games, sports and other recreational

activities, supported, where necessary, by trained facilitators or coaches.

Once ratified by any State, the signatory state accepts the Convention as part of its own national

laws required to be complied with. Judged by a reading of the Convention and the comments

to Article 31, most signatory states insofar as is concerned the rights contained in Article 31,

have thus far failed to comply or do so or only partly comply.132

The Convention it changes everything not only for children and all those who have an interest

in their childhood, but also for the artistic and architectural community as professional

groupings, as they have a legally enforceable instrument in their hand enabling them as a

collective to demand from signatory governments the resources and measures necessary to

132 A fact recognized by the Committee stating (at p. 2): “[…] the Committee is concerned by the poor

recognition given by States to the rights contained in article 31. Poor recognition of their significance in the

lives of children results in lack of investment in appropriate provisions, weak or non-existent protective

legislation and the invisibility of children in national and local-level planning. In general, where investment is

made, it is in the provision of structured and organized activities, but equally important is the need to create

time and space for children to engage in spontaneous play, recreation and creativity, and to promote societal

attitudes that support and encourage such activity. United Nations, Committee on the Rights of the Child.

General comment No. 17 (2013) on the right of the child to rest, leisure, play, recreational activities, cultural life and the arts

(art. 31), CRC/C/GC/17, Adopted by the Committee at its sixty-second session (14 Jan – 1 Feb 2013).

101

provide for urban areas complying with the spirit and terms of the Convention. It is no longer

open for debate whether or not those areas, facilities and open spaces is necessary, or

whether or not playful activity in public spaces is acceptable or not, international law as

ratified by the signatory States says it is. Whether or not the constituencies of signatory states

will put sufficient pressure on their governments is a different matter, and what level of

compliance and provision will be considered sufficient is another.

It so happens that General comment No. 17 (2013) to the Convention also offers what can arguably

be considered the most authorative and useful definition of ‘play’ in relation to children. It

defines play as:

“Play: Children’s play is any behaviour, activity or process initiated, controlled and structured

by children themselves; it takes place whenever and wherever opportunities arise. Caregivers

may contribute to the creation of environments in which play takes place, but play itself is

non-compulsory, driven by intrinsic motivation and undertaken for its own sake, rather than

as a means to an end. Play involves the exercise of autonomy, physical, mental or emotional

activity, and has the potential to take infinite forms, either in groups or alone. These forms

will change and be adapted throughout the course of childhood. The key characteristics of

play are fun, uncertainty, challenge, flexibility and non-productivity. Together, these factors

contribute to the enjoyment it produces and the consequent incentive to continue to play.

While play is often considered non-essential, the Committee reaffirms that it is a fundamental

and vital dimension of the pleasure of childhood, as well as an essential component of

physical, social, cognitive, emotional and spiritual development.”133

133 General comment No. 17 (2013) on the right of the child to rest, leisure, play, recreational activities, cultural life and the arts,

paragraph 14 p. 4-5

102

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