The design of the Coronation invitation sent by King Charles to a couple of thousand guests in early April was, as expected, a standard celebration of Britain’s flora and fauna with a heraldic twist: the common blue butterfly rubbing shoulders with one of the three lions as part of the general gaiety of Spring. It’s the likely subject of the dreams we imagine Charles having nightly on lavender-scented pillows: of a pastoral, organically-grown, British utopia.
Amidst this twee arts and craftery, however, it was a surprise to see the enigmatic Green Man, whose foliate head, crafted from horse-chestnut and oak leaves, is familiar from medieval cathedral columns and naff pub signs, yet whose pagan associations seem at odds with the monarchy’s protocol-bound pageantry.
The unintentional link is perhaps that both royal protocol and the Green Man are invented myths. As historian Eric Hobsbawn famously wrote in The Invention of Tradition (1983), royal ceremonies were deliberately constructed to create a sense of continuity, legitimacy, and national identity. The same can arguably be said of the Green Man in his current ritualistic form as a harbinger of Spring, most notably seen in May Day celebrations like Jack in the Green, in Hastings. As the medieval art historian Cassandra Harrington recently pointed out, even though foliate figures are abundant throughout the medieval and early modern period, “the so-called Green Man is a post-nineteenth-century Frazerian invention, sustained by nationalistic sentimentality and romanticism.” So much for the folksy visual culture that sustains popular national nostalgia.
Deller is a great chronicler of modern Britain, helping us to make sense of ourselves
What about British artists presenting a more nuanced examination of our national identity? Turner Prize-winner Jeremy Deller is known for his conceptual, video and installation work referencing British history and his new book Art is Magic (Profile), a hugely entertaining book on his cultural influences, launches two days before the coronation. (It is also published in a limited collector’s edition by quirky imprint CHEERIO.) The book is a real treat, not just for Deller enthusiasts, but for anyone interested in the kind of contemporary, folky British history he examines – ranging from brass bands to Stringfellows nightclub to rave culture – in his broad but distinctive body of work. It’s also an invaluable resource, since many of the artist’s works consist of extra-mural public “happenings”, meaning few will have witnessed them first-hand.
Deller describes Art is Magic as “a children’s book for adults”, an image-heavy volume that skips through each of his major works, with the author self-deprecatingly narrating how each came about. Humour aside, there are revelatory insights into works such as the 2001 re-enactment of The Battle of Orgreave (the 1984 confrontation between police and picketing miners near Sheffield, [pictured above]). I’ve always speculated about his underlying intention when making this genre-defying, hugely political work, and Deller comments pithily: “[I]t was never meant to heal community wounds – however much art is heralded as being capable of achieving this. If anything, it was intended to make people angry again.” By this account, he was successful.
Deller is a great chronicler of modern Britain, helping us to make sense of ourselves in ways few artists can do. He excels at drawing pop-cultural connections, which began early in his career with his History of the World drawing in 1996, an attempt to explain the changes in twentieth century Britain through music. In a similarly musical vein, he curated a 2013 Hayward touring exhibition called All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, which examined the influence of the Industrial Revolution on late twentieth-century life. Deller set paintings by nineteenth-century artist John Martin alongside recent works, including his own Another Time Another Place, which depicts the relationship between the entertainment industry and heavy industry, using the family tree and working-class roots of musician Bryan Ferry as a starting point. “[H]eavy Metal in the 1970s and 1980s was a ritualistic recreation of heavy industry – an artistic if not operatic depiction of dangerous factory life, replaying the sights and sounds of the workplace,” Deller tells us.
Deller’s sense of history comes alive in his collaborative work with the public, in which he dislocates the idea of the artist as sole author. This is particularly evident in memorialising works such as Battle of Orgreave and We’re Here Because We’re Here – a 2016 event to commemorate the Somme, in which 1,600 male volunteers appeared on railway stations, shopping centres and other public places, dressed in WW1 uniforms.
Art is Magic dedicates several pages to Folk Archive, the project Deller co-created with Alan Kane, generating a touring exhibition and book in 2005. This was an intriguing attempt to bring “contemporary popular art from the UK” in all its forms, from marching banners to pictures of men competitively gurning. The Folk Archive [pictured] image from that show is a pleasing counter to the King’s coronation invitation: a genuine examination of everyday creativity.
In stark contrast to Deller’s broadly enjoyable portrait of contemporary Britain, fellow-Turner Prize-winner Steve McQueen’s unsettling and confronting video work Grenfell will also be on show during the coronation.
In December 2017, the filmmaker and video artist – most famous for directing 12 Years a Slave – took a helicopter ride from the outskirts of northwest London to Grenfell Tower to make a one-shot, 24-minute film of the ruins of the terrible fire on 14 June that year; Grenfell is currently on view at The Serpentine but will enter the Tate’s collection later this year [pictured below].
“I feared once the tower was covered up it would only be a matter of time before it faded from the public’s memory,” McQueen has commented. The film is devastating in its impact, a monument to the criminal loss of 72 lives. The footage starts unremarkably with a panorama of fields and golf courses, accompanied by birdsong and traffic noises. Soon enough the charred husk of Grenfell’s ghost haunts the frame, presented unflinchingly to the viewer. McQueen forces us to study this open wound in the city from every possible angle, as the camera sweeps around and around the building.
The hazmat suits of the workers almost remove us from the stark reality of the scene
We see workers in PPE attending to the site, and hundreds of plastic bags filled with burnt waste: you can’t help but imagine the bodies of the victims. It is truly chilling. The hazmat suits of the workers almost remove us from the stark reality of the scene, offering a possible dystopian vision far away from London. We must remind ourselves, however, that this was the result of corruption, cruelty, and disdain – not some unavoidable catastrophe.
As Paul Gilroy’s accompanying essay notes, “the building’s shell is simultaneously a history lesson, a ruined house, a grave, and a memorial.” It is possible to see it in even wider terms: a damning portrait of a hollowed-out, unequal nation, beset by privatisation. For me, McQueen’s film showed that, to truly understand Grenfell, we must never forget the reality of this building.
Deller and McQueen may not be an obvious pairing, but as chroniclers of contemporary Britain they offer up incisive work that speaks powerfully for the role of art as it frames history in the making. Read Art is Magic and watch Grenfell, as well as (or instead of) the coronation.
Max Lunn is a journalist based in London
