Seen Around

 Wandering towards the familiar Abbey Gardens early-morning-walk path, I noticed a nearby display of what I correctly judged to be some children’s work. On inspecting it I discovered indeed the display was

Bury in Bloom community display in
the Abbey Gardens

display was of some Primary schoolchildren’s work under the umbrella [or perhaps, parasol] of Bury In Bloom, an organisation run, I always supposed, by sturdy, confident Lady Gardeners committed to beauty in the public realm. And it probably is but this time, the Ladies were looking to educate and inculcate. There is an indication headed: 

           Celebrating 60 Years of Friendship, Bury In                            Bloom friendship and flowers bloom and grow.

A further notice reveals that the display is made not just by schools, but also by those in care homes and community groups and gives names of groups and occasionally of children. The display consists of lots of large flowers fashioned out of chiefly paper and card, placed in huge tubs painted in psychedelic colours and patterns. Looks delightful but even more satisfying are the notices planted among the flowers and pots, suggesting ideas for others to follow to live better lives. All inspirational stuff!

A floral contributor

“Invite a friend round to your house to play and share your toys with them.” Westgate Primary School.

“Our Motto says it all: Friendship, Love and Truth." St. Edmundsbury Oddfellows.

“If someone looks lonely at playtime, ask them to join your game.” Sebert Wood Primary School.

I have to say in a completely open and non-cynical way, that the whole ensemble raises the spirits and most definitely, a smile. It reminds too of the shining innocence of small children and the wholly positive view of their early world they have. As I have been reading the poetry recently, of Philip Larkin, notoriously depressing and world-weary, this counterpoint is optimistic and joyful! In fact, heart-warming!

Angel Hotel

This morning, en route home via the ‘underpass’ of the Angel Hotel, behold a splendid sight. Some sort of red racing car with lots of external pipes and what seemed, ‘extras’. It is only now that I see from my quick photograph, en passant, that there don’t seem to be any back wheels.! To my inexpert eye, it does look as if concocted from a kit but nonetheless, it also looks dashing and infinitely desirable. And it reminds me of what an old friend, now departed, would have called it: she would have said it was an absolutely spiffing motor! And so it is, especially if it actually works! I do wish I had gone into the Angel to try to discover more about the red racer this morning but I didn’t think of it; later I went back but the glorious construction had gone!

Fabian with his splendid equipment

Again en route home, but this time, from the hairdresser at the corner of High Baxter Street and Brentgovel Street. Jenny the Hair, had told me that a recently-opened coffee shop along High Baxter, had been warmly recommended by a couple of her clients. So, on impulse, I located AlemaCoffee, not a difficult job in view of the new external painting in a strident fuschia colour!! More knicker-shop than coffee-shop BUT this is the first coffee shop I have seen in Bury St Ed run by someone who knows and understands coffee! Fabian, the owner/barista is from Ecuador; his father runs the family coffee farm in Ecuador from where Fabian obtains his coffee beans, all stored in full view in large boxes piled up in the shop. To hear Fabian explain the differences and properties of arabica and robusta coffee beans is to hear a special kind of poetry! The place is tiny, furnished with some impressive-looking [and beautiful] brass equipment for roasting/ grinding etc There are the too-numerous boxes of beans, for which Fabian feels he cannot afford alternative storage, and scant seating for perhaps five or six people. Fabian is also a chef and opens his coffee bar for short days to enable him to cook elsewhere in the interests of solvency. As a coffee-lover who limits herself to one cup a day providing it is Good Coffee, I have to admit that Fabian is no ordinary barista and that  s  coffee [‘House motto: From Farm to Cup’] is super. AlemaCoffee is warmly recommended to one and all.

Stolen Nazi Art

 l

Jardin de Monet a Giverny
Claude Monet

Very interested to read of the revelation this week that the Kunsthaus Museum in Zurich intends to remove five paintings from public view on June 20 as it collaborates with the owner of the five artworks to investigate whether they might have been looted by the Nazis during WW2. One of the reasons that this caught my eye was that one of the five suspect works of art is Jardin de Monet a Giverny by Claude Monet! My grand-daughter, Niamh, and I visited Giverny for a delightful couple of days last September, her first visit with which she seemed enchanted. As was I! And we seem to have developed a certain personal possessiveness about the famous garden! 

 

Portrait of the Sculptor, Louis-Joseph
Gustave Courbet

 The remaining four paintings removed from public view are pictured below, plus one under review.

La Route Montante
Paul Gauguin

 All five paintings are part of the Buhrle Foundation collection focussed chiefly on French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works and are a core part of the Kunsthaus display on long-term loan from the Foundation E.G.Buhrle which has requested the removal of the five while it assesses their provenance. This move has been prompted by the March 2024 publication of the U.S. State Dept’s latest ‘Best practices for handling Nazi-looted art.’ These expand the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art set out in 1998 which focussed on providing restitution to the families of the original owners for treasures that were either stolen or forcibly sold by the Nazis.

The Kunsthaus 

The Kunsthaus has published an apology for the current removals, acknowledging its regret but also supporting the decision of the Buhrle Foundation ‘in acting correctly and comprehensively’ in its decision. Meanwhile, the Buhrle Foundation published the following: “The Foundation strives to find a fair and equitable solution with the legal successors of the former owners of these works, following best practices.” It is also conducting a separate investigation of a sixth work currently on display at Kunsthaus Zurich, Edouard Manet’s La Sultaine.

Emil Buhrle during WW2

 Emil Buhrle was a German-born Swiss industrialist and arms manufacturer whose passion was collecting art. During the war, despite the fact that he used child labour and forced labour, he was permitted by the Swiss government to sell arms to both the Allies and to the Nazis and by the end of the war, had become Switzerland’s wealthiest man. Both during the war and after, Buhrle continued to buy art on a massive scale and suspicions have long endured about the provenance of some of the works in his possession.

In 2021 an extension to the Kunsthaus in Zürich, Switzerland's largest art museum, opened, with almost an entire floor dedicated to paintings and sculptures on 20-year loan from the Bührle Foundation. This drew criticism due to Bührle's Nazi-era weapons dealings, and his use of forced labour and child labour in his factories at the time. Up to 90 of the works loaned to the Kunsthaus are thought possibly to have been acquired illegitimately from Jews; historian Erich Keller said "We need independent research into the art's provenances, and then to consider which of these paintings really belong in the Kunsthaus and which need to be given back." The Bührle Foundation's director responded that "The approximately 90 works are works for which no complete provenance is known, but for which there is also no reason to assume a problematic provenance".

Hundreds of thousands of paintings and millions of books as well as cultural and religious artefacts were stolen from Jewish owners by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Many have not been returned to

The Old Tower
Vincent van Gogh

their original, rightful owners. During WW2, though Switzerland remained neutral, it also retained strong economic ties to Nazi Germany and its allies. An article about Nazi-looted art from the National Archives’ Holocaust Records Preservation Project states that:

“Confiscated artworks were often saved for private Nazi and German collections, while some pieces were sold through neutral countries like Switzerland to raise capital for purchasing additional art pieces and to purchase materials for the Nazi war machine. Additionally, Switzerland offered a large market for ‘degenerate art.’

During the Thirties, the Nazis declared that a variety of modern art and artists were sick and immoral. The regime called this Degenerate Art and in 1937 they confiscated thousands of examples of this so-called degenerate art, displaying many in the Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937. Many thousands of examples were simply destroyed.

La Sultane Edouard Manet
Not removed but under review

Portrait of the Sculptor, Louis-Joseph
Gustave Courbet

Facing Up To Inadequacy

Leader of the Flemish
Primitives.
Jan van Eyck
1436

 Earlier this week I was due to give a talk to the local Art Appreciation U3A Group and off I swanned, generously prepared as I had twelve pages of script and 76 images, all on The Flemish Primitives, and all well-rehearsed. Slight twinge of surprise to learn that the regular guy who understands how to convey my USB images into the projector probably via laptop or I-pad, and thus to the screen, was on holiday. Obviously this casual attitude to important duties, should be outlawed but there it was and two lovely male members of the group were on hand to perform the necessary magic. As the male ego is inclined to facilitate self-belief, they both looked confident and capable and my immediate stab of dismay on the initial news, hovered uncertainly as they busily thrashed about among the black cables. Twenty minutes later as the elderly audience waited expectantly and the screen stayed empty, I decided I would have to go ahead without benefit of the illustrations. Old age does at least confer a philosophical approach to disaster and under the banner of Luther’s, “ I stand here, I can do no other” I waded in. Ten minutes after the ‘get-go’ as Americans are wont to say, a picture appeared on a quite large laptop screen on the table nearby which some of the audience may have been able to see distantly but which I couldn’t consult as it was at right angles to my view. I did occasionally ask which picture was on board, the laptop was turned and I had to stop delivering my talk to be able to see it; it was, of course, never the image to which I was speaking!

Gerard David. 
The Holy Family 1520

The following one and a half hours were a bit of a shambles, pictorially speaking, though my script was fine. It must have been a mystifying challenge, shall we say, for the listeners/  viewers, but several kind, polite people came up to thank me at the end. I stopped after the first half of my talk, at the end of the narrative about Jan Van Eyck and three of his masterpieces, leaving three more artists of the period to be covered at what the Boss man suggested, might be in next year’s programme. At the moment, it is now booked for October and I am busily adding one more artist [Gerard David] to the yet-to-be-delivered talk for it to better stand alone while trying to banish the Imposter Syndrome feeling I am experiencing. I am certainly not underqualified to give a talk on Flemish art and nor was I unprepared but the feeling of exposure last Monday was quite brutal and embarrassing, even though the mess was clearly not my fault but I do have a feeling of inadequacy-by-association!

And, thinking of inadequacy, I propose to banish thoughts of the politically-inept Sunak’s slightly early departure from the D-Day remembrances and his

Rishi Sunak

subsequent exposure to the cruel delight and mockery of the U.K. population. Although one does wonder what on earth his political advisers were thinking of! However, I also have a quote on Trump for which sadly, though I copied it down, I neglected to add the source! However, it is so perfect I quote it here in all its witty succinctness! The person who unwittingly provided this quote,  acknowledges the unfitness of Trump to govern, and speaks of, “the chaos wreaked by an ego unable to grasp its own ineptitude.” I should note that Trump, increasingly and bewilderingly, emerging as the favourite in the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, keeps demonstrating in his recent speeches, that he intends to demolish democracy in the U.S. and use the power of the state to punish his enemies and critics. Robert Kagan uses the memorable phrase, "his deep thirst for vengeance."  I would say that feelings of inadequacy are unknown to Donald.

Trump

Maunsell Forts

A Maunsell Fort
Each fort was a cluster of seven individual giant boxed
steel structures on top of huge reinforced lattice girders

I half heard an allusion to “Shivering Sands” on Radio Four a few days ago and began to listen to a broadcast on what I eventually understood to be the Maunsell Forts. They were/are off the coast near Whitstable in Kent apparently, and I was mystified that, after living in Kent for over 30 years [until 2015] and with a stepson living in Whitstable, that I had never before heard of these forts.

Possibly 1939
My youngest brother, who lied about
his age, was fighting with the 
Sherwood Foresters at Monte
Cassino when he was only 17.

It is a long time since WW2 [1939-1945] during which time I grew up through Primary School to Grammar School in 1945. I do have strong contemporaneous memories of those years, but they are of sisters, childhood, playing and den-building over long summers in the large wood next-door to our garden and of the daily play-time with ‘my gang’. And of course, importantly, avoiding my father when possible. I did know that Hitler was bad and that Uncle Joe Stalin was good. Two of my half-brothers were in Army uniform; the other two were not, one being a train driver [essential to the war effort] and the other pronounced unfit to serve after an horrendous car accident. I knew that Johnny Ball who lived nearby had been killed in the war and that there was an American Army camp in the big field beyond the wood next-door and when soldiers from there walked past our front gate, my sister Esme and I knew to shout, “Have you got any gum, chum?” and we were sometimes rewarded. Rural Nottinghamshire was spared the terrors of London bombing although one of our favourite games was, ‘Being Bombed Out’ (which we had never experienced!)

S S Richard Montgomery 1940

The Port of London had always been one of the busiest in the world and at the height of WW2 it remained one of the few ports still able to receive ships containing valuable supplies to keep the country on its feet. As a result, the shipping channel, visible from Whitstable, became a frequent target for German mines as well as serving to guide enemy bombers to the capital. The enemy mine-laying in that channel, was so successful that, by 1940, over 100 British ships had been sunk in the Thames Estuary. Something had to be done!

Guy Maunsell, a highly-respected civil engineer, interested in concrete and the recent progress in experimenting with concrete for non-traditional

Guy Maunsell  1884-1961

use, was approached to come up with ideas to deal with the problem. He had gained useful experience of concrete design and construction techniques through his involvement in the building of the Storstrom Bridge in S.E. Denmark.

He proposed Martello-like constructions, suitably amended. [The Martello Towers were land-based coastal fortifications built during the Napoleonic Wars in the early nineteenth century.] Maunsell created plans to build off-shore forts, built on concrete bases, towed out to sea then sunk into the sea bed. Despite his designs, ready by November 1940, being met with some doubt, nevertheless, his plans for four gun-emplacements/off-shore forts were given the go-ahead on 6 March, 1941, built for the Royal Navy, to his design, and installed between 1942 and 1943. Each fort accommodated [one suspects, to Spartan standards] up to 265 men on five floors and they manned and maintained anti-aircraft guns mounted on the top ‘deck’ of each fort. During their time in operation, the Red Sand and the Shivering Sand forts between them, shot down 22 German aircraft and 30 V1 doodlebugs [flying bombs]; they also participated in the sinking of the one U-Boat successfully dispatched! Several more forts, for the Army, were similarly installed in the Mersey Estuary, a total of seven Maunsell Forts in all.

Locations of the seven Maunsell Forts

When the war ended the sea forts remained manned until 1953 when there was talk of dragging them back to shore to be dismantled but this idea proved too expensive, and so, stripped of all machinery, they were abandoned. They have become an embedded part of the coastal view with artists and photographers including the forts, huge and stark and striking, in Whitstable photography projects.

Over the years a number of pirate radio stations have used them for illegal broadcasting; Screaming Lord Sutch for Radio Sutch and Invicta Radio were two in the Sixties. In the summers of 2007 and 2008, Red Sands Radio, commemorating the pirate radio stations of the Sixties, briefly operated from there until the fort was declared unsafe and moved to Whitstable.

Map of British ships sunk in the Thames Estuary
1939-1945

Wartime residents of one of the Forts

'The Navy' on board in action in the early 1940s