Drawing, writing and curating: Barbara Jones and the art of arrangement

An essay by Catherine Moriarty to accompany the exhibition Black Eyes & Lemonade: Curating Popular Art at the Whitechapel Gallery, 9 March–1 September 2013. Barbara Jones was good at arranging things. Though produced in a relatively short These might be drawings on a page, words period of time, the exhibition presented in a sentence, or the compositional an interpretation of popular art that Jones elements of a mural or watercolour. had arrived at over a number of years. From her studies of mural decoration The relationship between her various at the Royal College of Art in the 1930s, painting, drawing and writing projects is a her book illustration projects of the close one. Each activity was driven by an 1940s, watercolour commissions for the emphatic desire to describe, depict and wartime Recording Britain initiative, and communicate, and the different elements beautifully laid out illustrated features of her work often overlapped and informed for the Architectural Review - on topics each other. Invited to organise an exhibition which included canal boat decoration, wax of popular and traditional arts to be held at works and the seaside - Jones had covered the Whitechapel Gallery in 1951, Jones was considerable ground.2 Her definition presented with an opportunity to arrange of popular art challenged conventional in a gallery space the actual objects she understanding of folk or traditional art, had previously drawn or written about. particularly through her inclusion of the The exhibition allowed Jones to configure, machine-made and the contemporary. in three dimensions, an assemblage of The originators of the exhibition concept, diverse items that included fairground the Society for Education in Art (SEA), were souvenirs, figureheads, fireworks and taken aback by Jones’s interpretation of confectionary (Fig. 1). their theme. An organisation established Declaring that ‘the museum eye must be under the chairmanship of Herbert Read, abandoned’ Jones created a provocative their aim had been to display traditional art spectacle which posed challenging with its roots in pre-industrial ways of life questions about hierarchies of value, to evidence the social value of art education making and manufacture, collecting and and the significance of skill development consumption.1 Through her curatorial through craft practices. By proposing to method – though she herself would not have include mass-produced objects, Jones described it in such terms - she celebrated challenged their values and upset their and made visible the participative networks intent. It was Hugh Scrutton, Director of of cultural production, championing the Whitechapel Gallery, who defended the judgment of makers, collectors and Jones’ position and helped fight her consumers in opposition to the didactic corner. Minutes in the archive reveal that dispensations of connoisseurs and feelings were running high in the spring of design reformers. 1951. Scrutton’s frustration with the SEA is clear, and while he supported Jones he was also prepared to temper her ebullience in order to reach a workable compromise for the Gallery.

Fig. 1 Barbara Jones at work, 1947. The Director of Art at the Arts Council of qualities. It was taken from a poem of 1813 In 1946, Barbara Jones created a mural Before turning to Black Eyes & Lemonade Great Britain, Philip James, as co-funder of by the Irish songwriter and entertainer sequence for the ‘ Things for Children’ itself it is important to consider the other the project and an advisor to the SEA, had Thomas Moore which Jones felt expressed section exhibition at the Victoria and activities that engaged Jones during 1950 recommended Jones as exhibition organiser. ‘the vigour, sparkle and colour of popular art Albert Museum. Two years later she was and 1951, for during these years many of Having made several broadcasts on the rather better than the words ‘popular art’.’ asked to design a three-panel sequence her interests coalesced and, as she later topic she was a compelling advocate and - Animal, Vegetable & Mineral - for the put it, she had never worked so hard. As an A Persian’s heaven is easily made, a recognised authority. In fact, there were Council of Industrial Design travelling experienced mural artist it was inevitable ‘Tis but – black eyes and lemonade.’ 4 various others he might have suggested who exhibition Design Fair, which toured to that Jones would be invited to assist with shared an enthusiasm for objects, practices As well as her subject expertise, Jones various regional cities in Britain before the displays for the Festival of Britain. and ways of life that the world wars and brought other skills to the project. reaching the Whitechapel Art Gallery in Working with the architect Eric Brown she industrial development threatened, who Democratisation of the arts and design January 1949. Her panels depict various designed murals for the Seaside Pavilion had researched and published on the topic, reform were important elements of post- forms of arrangement, objects on shelves, on the South Bank. Brown had been her who collected, and whose remit fitted more war planning. Architecture, access to the or in vitrines that indicate the connections co-author on ‘Roundabouts: demountable closely the SEA’s definition. Noel Carrington arts and campaigns to educate consumers between the natural and the man-made. baroque’, one of the most deeply and Clarke Hutton’s Popular Art in Britain interlocked in the drive to change the shape A snowflake is juxtaposed with an intricate researched Architectural Review articles.5 was published in 1945 as part of the King of post-war Britain. Barbara Jones received lace pattern, a tropical pitcher plant with Upstream, at the Festival Pleasure Gardens Penguin series. Enid Marx and Margaret various commissions in this context, from a lidded tankard, a stag beetle and a tank at Battersea, Jones worked with designer Lambert’s English Popular and Traditional her lithograph Fairground in the School Print denote armour (heralding biomimicry), a James Gardner - who had also orchestrated Art appeared in 1946 followed by the ‘more series intended to introduce contemporary bat and an umbrella, collapsible structures. the Design Fair project - and with whom she wide-ranging’ English Popular Art in 1951.3 art to schoolchildren, to her illustrations Perhaps most inventively, bladderwrack shared a mutual interest in the decorative Certainly, Jones valued the traditional and for the design education booklet This or seaweed is aligned with a diagram of the and the irreverent.6 the handmade – and the exhibition included That, and mural commissions for design London regional railway network ship’s figureheads, broadsheets and quilts promotion exhibitions. In these projects (Figs. 4 and 5). - but she alone celebrated the energy and she interwove her varied talents, vibrancy of contemporary and mass-market distinctive visual style, and interests in equivalents. The title of the exhibition was popular art to make official cultural chosen because it emphasised these very policy more accessible (Figs. 2, 3 and cover).

Fig. 2 Fairground, lithograph no. 2 in the School Print series printed by the Baynard Press, 1945. Fig. 3 Page from the publication This or That by Wyndham Goodden with illustrations by Barbara Jones. Published by the Scottish Committee of the Council of Industrial Design, 1947 to accompany the exhibition Enterprise Scotland. At the same time as plans for the Festival lines. The front cover depicts a figure with of Britain were being realised, Jones was an articulated jaw, perhaps a ventriloquist’s working on her book The Unsophisticated puppet, with the book’s title tattooed on its Arts. In many ways, Black Eyes & Lemonade chest and the author’s name on its arms. might be considered as a three-dimensional Jones often amalgamated word and image version of this publication in which Jones and much of the popular art she valued did pulled together the disparate topics she so too - packaging, banners, samplers and had ‘drawn and described’ as stand-alone pub mirrors immediately come to mind. articles for the Architectural Review. The Behind the figure, on the left, is a fish- Unsophisticated Arts has a marvellous dust shaped hanging shop sign and to the right, jacket and having designed many book an eye, which on closer inspection is an covers for other authors, Jones was skilled optician’s sign. Black Eyes and Lemonade at making a powerful first impression. included such a sign, a contemporary (Fig. 6) Surviving artwork reveals an earlier example borrowed from Bateman’s title to have been The Vernacular Arts and opticians in Croydon – Jones’s hometown – it is possible that the title was modified whose shop front she had drawn and which as Jones came to adopt an increasingly is reproduced in The Unsophisticated Arts.7 contrary position. The spine of the dust Jones was to represent the disembodied jacket comprises a list of words in alternate eye in a number of contexts to denote fonts arranged ladder-like: taxidermy; the significance of vision, undoubtedly to fairgrounds; canal boats; seaside; riverside; greatest effect in her exhibition poster. A tattooing; food; waxworks; toys; rustic work; magnificent design, to which we shall turn shops; festivals; funerals. On the back, the shortly, it also incorporates her love of reader is confronted by the large teeth, wide conjoining text and image and her penchant eyes and flared nostrils of three carousel for lists (Fig. 7). horses bearing down, the drama of the red and white page articulated by Jones’s fluent use of negative space and the energy of her

Figs. 4 & 5 Panels for Animal, Vegetable & Mineral, part of the Council of Industrial Design travelling exhibition Design Fair which toured to various regional cities in Britain before reaching the Whitechapel Art Gallery in January 1949. Black Eyes & Lemonade

List writing figured significantly in the exploitation of Animals – Spratty cat. planning of the exhibition, as documents in Below, in Jones’s hand, we read her both Jones’s and the Whitechapel Gallery’s subsequent thoughts: Cage of birds (live); archives make clear. The objects she had tomb stones; Bonzo; Felix; Brumas souvenirs previously drawn and written about needed [the baby polar bear born at London Zoo to be brought together and this presented in 1949 which attracted almost 3 million a logistical and conceptual challenge. visitors]; Aquarium; Anthropomorphic Firstly, she had to decide how the exhibition treatment of animals; Muffin the Mule.’ would be structured and the notes she By the time of the exhibition, the section produced during its planning show how ‘Play’ was re-titled ‘Toys, Hobbies and she categorised and classified her topic Pets’. This modifying and re-jigging of the through various stages. As she described in various sections continued as the shape the catalogue introduction in typical half- of the exhibition developed and as the serious, half-jesting manner: actual exhibits were finalised. Jones also had to bear in mind that in order to placate There are a number of ways in which the Society for Education in Art, she had an exhibition of popular art could have agreed that the balance between hand and been arranged: historically, sociologically, machine-made exhibits would be about geographically, by categories of the equal.8 In the catalogue, she explained materials used, by occupations, by with characteristic precision and more artistic themes, and so on. But it was than a touch of irony, how the exhibition’s finally decided to set up a series of parameters were determined: arbitrary categories which reflect most forms of human activity without creating Selection has been difficult: of course bogus sociological implications, and which there is only room for a tiny fraction of also did make the exhibition impossible to the possible material, so we have left out arrange. A number of things could easily architecture, furniture, gardening, heavy appear in two places; several do. industry, railways, road transport, aviation, shop-windows and a lot of other things, A typed document entitled ‘Proposed list of because they are far too big to get into the categories for Exhibition of English Popular gallery, and it is much better to have real, Art, Whitechapel 1951’, begins with section small things than photographs. headings: Entrance Display; Birth, Marriage, Death; The Family; The Home; Work; Play; As well as preferring exhibits that that Entertainment; Holidays; Festivals; Religion. were real, Jones wanted to include some The following pages include sub-sections which were alive. Although the cage of with lists of possible topics and activities birds mentioned above failed to materialise, that exhibits might represent. For example, as did the suggestion of a Massarella under ‘Pets’ (a sub-section of Play) appear: barrow from which ice cream would be sold, Stuffed pets; Weekly Newspapers on the exhibition did include a pavement artist

Fig. 6 The Unsophisticated Arts, dust jacket. Published by The Architectural Press, 1951. mice and birds etc.; Pigeoneering; Kitten drawing on the gallery floor and a visit from Fig. 7 Black Eyes & Lemonade poster designed by Barbara Jones, 1951. and puppy art; Louis Wain; Commercial a Pearly King and Queen.9 Fig. 8 Advertisement designed by Ashley Havinden in the Journal of the Society of Industrial Artists, June 1949. Jones liked performances and ceremonies Tussaud’s and the Bethnal Green branch Captain Long John Silver, whose figurehead drawings in The Unsophisticated Arts for as much as the material culture that went of the National Union of Railwaymen. collection which he later donated to the example, those of pudding moulds and with them. For her, popular culture was Jones and Ingram sometimes sent standard Cutty Sark, now forms a prominent feature ornate cakes, possess similar attributes linked to environments, communities and typewritten letters to potential lenders and of the ship’s recent redevelopment. Even with the captions contributing to the tone lived experience. The Whitechapel Gallery in other instances wrote by hand, employing the Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, of objectivity, as do the page layouts display included Masonic regalia, Scottish flattery, charm and other methods to Hugh Scrutton, contributed an exhibit, a of Jones’s articles in the Architectural evening dress, Salvation Army uniforms and elicit a positive reply. The surviving nineteenth century lithograph of a prize Review which conjoin photography, type, the clothes of an Arsenal football fan, the correspondence to each of the 104 lenders, ram (Fig. 9). illustration and annotated diagrams across latter indicative of her populist outlook: with many letterheads and differing styles double pages (Figs. 10 & 11). Hal Foster of address, creates a vivid picture of British Photographs in the Whitechapel Gallery has described how ethnographic models The gorgeous outfit of a supporter has manufacturing in 1951.11 Archive and recently discovered contact are characterised by horizontal rather than been shown instead of the beautiful sheets in the Vogue Archive, record how vertical arrangements and, as we will see, striped Jerseys of the team because The attribution of each exhibit was carefully Jones arranged the exhibits in each gallery. Jones’s project was to involve others with today there are many more spectators noted in the catalogue although one Jones enjoyed shifts in scale, the massing a demonstrable commitment to the than players. reviewer could not resist alluding to the of items, and dramatic juxtapositions. ‘fieldwork of the everyday’.13 ‘kleptomaniac range of the collection’.12 She arranged singular crafted objects Many of the items included in the exhibition Some items were borrowed from friends and alongside the serially produced, the came from Jones’s own collection which associates. Edward Bawden–who Jones met treasured alongside the disposable, the included objects acquired during travels, while studying at the Royal College of Art– enduring alongside the ephemeral. Aping from bazaars, secondhand shops, and lent a paper crown and a zoetrope. Michael shop display, she did not try to disguise directly from makers. Further exhibits were Rothenstein lent a pincushion and a clay the seriality of the mass manufactured but sourced during a road trip in June 1951 pipe, and Malvina Cheek lent Pears’ soap made it a feature by stacking and creating that Jones made in a converted London advertisements in an album, both having rows of objects. In some instances she also taxi with her co-organiser Tom Ingram, also contributed to the Recording Britain suggested ethnographic arrangements, during which they acquired ‘a great number project. Other collectors and enthusiasts laying out objects to suggest an equivalence 10 of exciting things’. Other exhibits were were roped in, among them maritime between things, rather than an hierarchy borrowed from manufacturers, museums, enthusiast Sydney Cumbers, also known as of value. Some of the arrangements of and organisations as diverse as Madame

Fig. 9 Figureheads from the collection of Long John Silver as displayed at Black Eyes & Lemonade, 1951. Fig. 10 Page from the Architectural Review article ‘The Rose & Castle’, (December 1946), page 166. Fig. 11 Pages from the chapter ‘The Decoration of Food’ in The Unsophisticated Arts, 1951. Barbara Jones contested definitions of We must close our art-gallery eyes and taste determined by connoisseurs or design ears and open quite other ones to enjoy reformers who assumed the universal the popular arts. When these are used to value of modernist rationality. Through the strong colours, and vulgar contours, contributing to the paternalistic good design and easy ways generally, we can open up agenda of the Council of Industrial Design, an art gallery eye now and then for a crafty by illustrating publications and working on glance, just to distinguish a good gilded exhibitions, it is likely that she developed alsation from a crumby one.16 a sympathy for the ordinary consumer and their right to purchase as they pleased, ‘… As well as organising the exhibition, Barbara when he goes to buy something that he Jones designed its striking black and cannot make himself, he will probably yellow poster and the cover of its catalogue. choose it embellished; not plain and ugly Both emphasised the significance of the and fit-for-purpose, but coloured and curled exhibition’s title and made it clear that it and pretty.’ Indeed, the significance of shelf- prioritised looking. The eye motif was used appeal lay at the heart of her definition: widely by design promotion organisations in their exhibitions and publications to (…) though the fine arts express the artist’s emphasise the need for consumers to mind and eye, the sole aim of popular art is exercise scrutiny and discernment.17 In to please the consumer. It may please with contrast, Jones’s eye suggests pleasure, charm, gaiety, luxury or horror but it will each lash of text forming a radiating list never seek to exalt. Popular art can be a of the kinds of popular art included in the pretty china plate saying in fat black exhibition.18 As Hugh Scrutton, the Director letters GOD LOVES ME, but it can never of the Whitechapel Gallery put it, ‘it looks be the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.14 splendid in the Underground and I am very glad we put it there.’ 19 In an important recent essay on the exhibition, Gillian Whiteley explores how A friend of Jones, the poet Douglas Newton, it exemplified ‘the key issues at stake in compiled the catalogue which cost two the battle for cultural hegemony at an shillings (Fig. 12). Newton listed the exhibits important point in early postwar Britain.’ 15 and their lenders under sub-headings below Whiteley examines how the very notion the main categories determined by Jones, of the democratisation of the arts was writing pithy introductions to each group of perceived as a threat to elite culture. exhibits describing how they were made, for Jones, through the exhibition’s content and what purpose and by whom. The fact that display, and through her commentary in the the numbering of entries in the exhibition catalogue was fully aware of these tensions. catalogue did not always run consecutively Pitting one against the other, ultimately infuriated Scrutton but it is unlikely that to demonstrate their co-existence, was Jones and her colleagues lost much sleep entirely the point. over it. Newton also lent to the exhibition a pair of papier-maché chairs, a hand-painted valentine, a churchwarden clay pipe (the type with the very long handle), an album of views of the Crystal Palace-and this experience, as well as the hours he spent in the British Museum, stood him in good stead. He went on to join the Museum of

Fig. 12 Cover of the Catalogue to Black Eyes & Lemonade Primitive Art in New York establishing a designed by Barbara Jones. reputation as an innovator in designing tickets from a racetrack: 1950’. Henderson Art.’ 23 The analogy of the warehouse led the Whether they dismissed the exhibits museum displays of non-Western art, knew Douglas Newton, photographed him reviewer in the Daily Worker to describe or otherwise, visitors turned up in large eventually becoming curator emeritus of the and shared Jones’s interest in the surreal how the exhibition reminded him of the numbers. The Gallery had expected the department of the arts of Africa, Oceania possibilities and chance juxtapositions last scene in Citizen Kane. The topic of attendance figure to be around 20,000 over and the Americas at the Metropolitan of urban life, the accidental backdrop of consumption was a fitting one as the final its eight-week run but the total numbered Museum of Art. 20 The catalogue Newton posters on hoardings, graffiti on walls, years of rationing approached, as election 30,754 making Black Eyes & Lemonade, produced was intended to reduce the need chalk marks on pavements.22 Henderson’s campaigns intensified, and as the prospect fittingly, its most ‘popular’ exhibition of for lengthy captions next to the exhibits poetic photographs contrast sharply with of choice and the experience of plenty came the 1950s. The Henry Moore exhibition of because Jones wanted visitors to engage the observational methods employed by his within grasp. Berger however refuted Jones’ 1960 was the first to come close attracting with the exhibits in a way that contrasted wife, the anthropologist Judith Henderson, and Newton’s assertion that the ugly - almost 28,000. with the more passive, conventional who was engaged on an official survey of through the accretion of ‘age-value’ - would museum approach. She wanted visitors East End life. Henderson, like Jones, saw improve over time and, in line with the views to respond directly rather than taking the exhibition as a site of enquiry and the of the Society for Education in Art, pointed their cue from labels. This strategy of curatorial role as investigative rather than out that many of the machine-made exhibits accompanying hand list - which suggested didactic (Fig. 13). were ‘imposed commercial productions’: an equivalence between things - was a feature of Growth & Form, an exhibition The category ‘popular art’, a cavernous The argument that these things are enjoyed organised by Nigel Henderson and Richard emporium with plenty of odd corners, ignores the fact industrial capitalism has Hamilton at the Institute of Contemporary is one into which almost anything can now destroyed the standards of Popular Arts (ICA), 4 July – 31 August 1951 (which be stuffed. Taste and substituted for them standards overlapped with Black Eyes & Lemonade), Eric Newton, Manchester Guardian 11 August 1951. of gentility, Bogus-Originality and and most notably, two years later, the competitive cultural smartness. In fact, Eric Newton’s metaphor of the emporium exhibition Parallel of Life and Art also held the local inhabitants of Whitechapel place was extended by John Berger in a review at the ICA.21 In fact Nigel Henderson, a the exhibits in their proper perspective for the New Statesman to describe the key member of the Independent Group in by dismissing them. exhibition itself. He suggested that the its early years, was a contributor to Black Whitechapel Art Gallery had been ‘turned Eyes and Lemonade lending ‘Bookie’s into a sort of pantechnicon - of Popular

Fig. 13 Douglas Newton photographed by Nigel Henderson, 1952. Fig. 14 Mr George Burchett at work by Barbara Jones, 1950. From Popular to Pop

There are a lot of things here, made exhibition as a site of enquiry, this year, that could go straight into an were aligned.26 exhibition of modern art. (Catalogue, 7) Barbara Jones’s own engagement with While Eduardo Paolozzi’s passion for debate about traditional things and the science fiction and popular culture from the everyday continued in the years ahead. United States is often cited as heralding the Contributions to Herbert Spencer’s development of Pop Art in Britain, perhaps Typographica in the early 1960s and her Barbara Jones’s project deserves a more photographic feature on painted fishing prominent place in this discussion. In Black boat registration letters specifically, Eyes & Lemonade, Jones with Ingram and indicate her continued connection with Newton, presented British popular art as design debate of the first order. Jones both entertaining and elegiac, disclosing the had ended her 1951 catalogue essay poetry in the ephemerality of ticket stubs, suggesting the Victoria and Albert Museum matchbox labels, and in the skills of bakers acquire ‘a whole glittering roundabout’ but and the makers of worked pictures. While her campaign for a National Museum of many of the exhibits were ‘bold and fizzy’, Industrial Architecture made little progress they also spoke of a past fading in the face in the years ahead.27 Some of the themes of an accelerating future.24 Her painting of represented in Black Eyes & Lemonade she the tattooist George Burchett was made as developed further, writing books on Follies part of a record of premises on the South & Grottoes (1953), Design for Death (1967) Bank that were to be demolished to make and the Popular Arts of The First World War way for the Festival of Britain, and items (1972). As designer of the Woodentops from his shop were included in Black Eyes children’s television programme, first & Lemonade (Fig. 14). In juxtaposing for broadcast in 1955, her liking for Dutch example Bewick’s woodcuts with Dan Dare, dolls and puppets helped to shape a Jones presented this moment of loss as national phenomenon. a concomitant of optimism and post-war progress. It was precisely this quality of A fashion feature entitled ‘Sophisticated pathos that distinguished Henderson’s and Unsophisticated’ appeared in The and Jones’ appreciation of popular culture Ambassador – the British export magazine from Paolozzi’s.25 While Jones is often for fashion and textiles - in October considered in relation to the artists of the 1951. Located within the Black Eyes & pre-war generation, particularly those Lemonade installation, models in outfits by of an illustrative, Surrealist-inspired, leading British ready-to-wear companies neo-romantic persuasion, who framed were arranged alongside figureheads, a their interest in traditional art in more ventriloquist’s dummy and other exhibits, conventional ways, she is less frequently playing out the antithetical tension of aligned with the ideas and approach of Jones’s book title. Photographed by those younger than herself. Writing in 1999, Elsbeth Juda, the quality, audacity and Peter Blake reflected on the impact of commercialism of this performance and visiting Black Eyes & Lemonade and perhaps the resulting images, of the past crashing 1951 is best considered as an unusual into the future, would surely have won moment of collision between the concerns Jones’s approval (Fig. 15). of a thirty-nine year old designer and those Catherine Moriarty of a younger generation when, albeit briefly, Curatorial Director, University of Brighton their approach to the popular and the Fig. 15 Title page of the feature ‘Sophisticated and Unsophisticated’, The Ambassador Magazine, no. 10, 1951. Design Archives, March 2013. Afterword

Black Eyes & Lemonade: Curating Popular and those of the University of Brighton Art is a collaboration between Nayia Design Archives where research is Yiakoumaki, Curator of the Archive Gallery fostered as an active process of at the Whitechapel Gallery, Simon Costin, engagement connecting the historical Director of the Museum of British Folklore, and the contemporary. and Catherine Moriarty, Curatorial Director of the University of Brighton Design The support of Tony Raymond, holder of Archives. Coming to the project from Barbara Jones’s Estate, and his generosity different perspectives and backgrounds, in lending objects and items from her we shared an ambition to reconsider Hampstead studio has imbued the Barbara Jones’s seminal exhibition of 1951 exhibition with an aura that enriches its and to present popular art as a resource place between the past and the future. for today’s artists, designers and curators. To do so at the site of the original display Simon Costin, Catherine Moriarty, and with ready access to the Whitechapel Nayia Yiakoumaki Gallery Archive has given the project a March 2013 depth and resonance that could not have been achieved elsewhere.

The archive exhibition is part of the Whitechapel Gallery’s ongoing programme of displays which look into exhibition histories by animating personal and institutional archives. This display creates a link to two moments in the Whitechapel Gallery’s exhibition history – 1951 and now. Through it, we aimed to open up questions and issues relevant to contemporary curating. As a collaboration, the project linked the concerns of the Museum of British Folklore which addresses folklore as a vibrant, ever-transforming culture,

Colossal bottle covered with beer labels in the ‘Drinking’ section of Black Eyes & Lemonade, 1951. Notes

1. Black Eyes & Lemonade: A Festival of Britain Commonwealth Institute which opened in 1962. 16. Jones, “Popular Art,” 46. Pavilion’ of domestic goods recently available and exhibition of British popular and traditional art Gardner’s archive is held at the University of pre-selected by the Council of Industrial Design. arranged in association with the Society for Brighton Design Archives. 17. For example, The Council of Industrial Design’s See also Jonathan M Woodham “Britishness in Education in Art and the Arts Council organised Design Quiz of 1946 and the Penguin Book series Design, Material Culture and Popular Artefacts,” by Barbara Jones & Tom Ingram catalogued by 7. The drawing has an affinity with the 1938 The Things We See, published from 1946 onwards, Image, Power and Space: Studies in Consumption Douglas Newton (London: Whitechapel Art Country Life Press publication High Street with their eye-patterned end papers. For further & Identity, ed. Alan Tomlinson & Jonathan M Gallery, 1951). Catalogue of an exhibition held illustrated by Eric Ravilious with a text by discussion on the representation of the eye see Woodham, (Aachen and Oxford: Meyer & Meyer, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, August 11th to J M Richards. Catherine Moriarty, “A Back Room Service? 2007): 135-63. October 6th 1951, 5. The Council of Industrial Design Photographic 8. Minutes of a meeting held on 26 April 1951. Library 1945 -1965,” Journal of Design History 24. Handwritten note by Barbara Jones, May 1951. 2. The Recording Britain scheme was established Whitechapel Art Gallery Archive WAG/EXH/2/17/4 13. 1 (2000): 39-57. WAG/EXH/2/17/4 in 1940 and ran until 1943. Funded by the Pilgrim 9. Demonstrators and craftspeople formed part Trust, it was directed by Kenneth Clark. Barbara 18. It seems the idea may have originated 25. Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and of the Living Traditions of Scotland display at elsewhere. The June 1949 number of the Journal Art, 141-142. Martin Myron discusses Jones’ Jones was one of 97 artists involved and she the Festival Exhibition of Scottish Architecture contributed watercolours reproduced in each of of the Society of Industrial Artists included an appreciation of popular art in relation to ‘Pop’ and and Crafts held at the Royal Scottish Museum, advertisement designed by Ashley Havinden offers a more nuanced interpretation that those the four volumes published. The entire collection Edinburgh, 1951; and at the Sports and Power of artworks was given to the V&A in 1949. See for Crawfords Advertising, the firm he directed. offered by Patrick Wright in 1990 and Jeremy and Production Pavilions at the South Bank site. Conceptually it is identical to Jones’s poster with Millar in 2005, see Martin Myrone, “Instituting Gill Saunders, Recording Britain (London: V&A See Harriet Atkinson, The Festival of Britain: a Publishing, 2011). words standing as lashes arranged around an eye. English Folk Art,” Visual Culture in Britain 10.1 land and its people, (London and New York: I. B. Jones must have seen it since she was a member (2009): 27-52. 3. Margaret Lambert “Sources and Influences” Tauris, 2012). of the Society and contributed a review to the 26. Barbara Jones: paintings & drawings Enid Marx: a retrospective exhibition, (London: 10. Minutes of a meeting held on 22 June 1951. same number. Camden Arts Centre, 1979), 9. (Marlborough: Katharine House Gallery, 1999) 2. WAG/EXH/2/17/4 19. Letter from Hugh Scrutton to Barbara Jones, 4. Moore’s Intercepted Letters, or Two-penny 11. The bulk of the correspondence relating to 15 August 1951, WAG/EXH/2/17/4. 27. For a useful account see Ruth Artmonsky, Post-Bag was published in 1813. The quote Jones A snapper up of unconsidered trifles: a tribute loans is held at the University of Brighton 20. Holland Cotter, “Douglas Newton, Curator selected appears in Letter 6. Catalogue, 5. Design Archives. to Barbara Jones (London: Artmonsky Arts, 2008) Emeritus at the Metropolitan, Dead at 80”, 75-77. 5. Eric Brown and Barbara Jones, “Roundabouts: 12. John Berger, “ ‘Black Eyes & Lemonade’ at the The New York Times, 22 Sept. 2001. See also demountable baroque,” Architectural Review Whitechapel Art Gallery,” New Statesman Burton Benedict’s recollection of Newton in his XCVII, 578 (February 1945): 49-60. Jones also and Nation, 1 Sept. 1951: 1. interview A Social Anthropologist in Britain and Image Credits: designed the cover of this issue. For a complete Berkeley, University History Series, Department © Nigel Henderson Estate. Tate Archive: 13 bibliography see B. C. Bloomfield, “The Life and 13. Hal Foster, “The Archive without Museums,” of Anthropology, Berkeley, 2000-1. Online Archive October 77 (Summer 1996): 104-5. University of Brighton Design Archives: Work of Barbara Jones (1912-1978),” The Private of California, www.oac.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt 1,3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, 14 & cover. Library 5, 2:3 (Autumn 1999): 100-140. 14. Barbara Jones, “Popular Art,” Athene: 3000043s&query=&brand=oac4. Newton’s book © Victoria and Albert Museum, London: 2, 15 Journal of the Society for Education in Art 5. 3 Clowns was published by Harrap in 1957, with a Whitechapel Gallery Archive: 6, 7, 9, 10 Antony Hippisley Coxe, the Council of Industrial striking cover and illustrations by Jones. Design representative on the Festival (August 1951): 45-48. See also Lesley Whitworth, Presentation Panel, and theme convenor of “Anticipating Affluence: Skill, Judgement and 21. Victoria Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Thanks to co-curators Simon Costin and the Seaside Pavilion, also lent to Black Eyes & the Problems of Aesthetic Tutelage,” An Affluent Life and Art (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001) 89. Nayia Yiakoumaki and to Sylwia Serafinowicz Lemonade. Jones’ own account of her Festival Society? Britain’s Post-War ‘Golden Age’ Revisited, and Gary Haines; to Sue Breakell, Monica Brewis, 22. The 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition at of Britain was published as “Popular Arts” in ed. Lawrence Black and Hugh Pemberton, George Hardie, Jüri Kermik, Lesley Whitworth the New Burlington Galleries had a huge impact Mary Banham and Bevis Hillier (eds), A Tonic (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004): 167-183. and Jonathan Woodham who read early drafts on Jones and her contemporaries. to the Nation (London: Thames & Hudson, 15. Gillian Whiteley, “Kitsch as Cultural Capital: of this text; to Sirpa Kuitilainen, Lucy Hermann 1976): 129-132. Black Eyes & Lemonade and Populist Aesthetics 23. Berger, “Black Eyes & Lemonade at the and Barbara Taylor who prepared many of the images; to Lucy May, designer of the 6. James Gardner (1907-1995) was one of Britain’s in Fifties Britain,” Kitsch: History, Theory, Practice, Whitechapel Art Gallery,” New Statesman and publication; to Susan Bennett, Felice McDowell, most influential exhibition designers. Barbara ed. Monica Kjellman-Chapin (Newcastle upon Nation, 1 September 1951. The south bank site of Gillian Whiteley, Tom Wilson, and particularly, Jones worked with him again on a mural for the Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013). the Festival of Britain included a ‘Pantechnicon to Tony Raymond. ISBN: 978-0-85488-220-5 museumofbritishfolklore.com Museum of BritishFolklore brighton.ac.uk/designarchives University of Brighton DesignArchives whitechapelgallery.org Aldgate East / Liverpool St. London E17QX 77–82 Whitechapel HighSt. Whitechapel Gallery 9 March–1 September 2013 Whitechapel Gallery Pat Matthews Gallery (Gallery 4) Black Eyes &Lemonade: Curating Popular Art

Cover image: Illustration by Barbara Jones for the publication This or That published by the Scottish Committee of the Council of Industrial Design, 1947.