For more than 30 years of his life Albie Sachs lived as both lawyer and outlaw in an apartheid South Africa—working through the law in the public sphere, and against the law in the underground. As a result, he was detained in solitary confinement, tortured by sleep deprivation, and eventually blown up by a car bomb which cost him his right arm and the sight of an eye. Later he returned to play an important part in drafting South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution, and was appointed by Nelson Mandela to be a member of the country’s first Constitutional Court. As Sachs wrapped up his 15 year term this fall, Oxford published his book The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law. Below Sachs tells us why people all over the world visit the South African Constitutional Court every year.

Following his post is an excerpt from the opening of The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law which features artist Judith Mason. She explains the inspiration behind her Blue Dress, one of the art pieces acquired by Albie Sachs for the South African Constitutional Court gallery and the image on the cover of his book. To learn the full story behind Mason’s Blue Dress collection go here. And for more first hand perspective on South African culture and history, be sure to check out all of our Place of the Year contributions.

Justice Albie Sachs on the Constitutional Court Gallery

I recently had the great pleasure of visiting the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in Parliament Square. Its site is wonderful, and the rather unprepossessing building it occupies has been artfully adapted to give it a friendly, functional and stylish character. The one feature that I thought worked badly, however, was the presence in strategic places on the walls of large oil portraits of dead white, male dignitaries who had occupied the building in the past. One day I will be a dead, white male judge myself, nothing wrong with that in itself. But if it is the only imagery you see, the story is one of unjust exclusion, at odds with the very notion of doing justice to all without favour or prejudice. And even those less afflicted with political correctness than myself would recognise that apart from one elegant Gainsborough portrait, the pictures represent rather gloomy dead souls haunting a building in which the evolving wisdom of the ages is intended to resolve the problems of today in a clear, transparent and convincing way. I couldn’t help comparing the paintings with those that hang in the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, from which I have just stepped down as a judge after my fifteen year appointment came to an end. And this reflection made me realise what a remarkable place South Africa is to be in these days.

In particular I thought of the image of the Blue Dress in our Court. The Court was the first major new building of the post-apartheid era, constructed in the heart of the Old Fort Prison where both Gandhi and Mandela had been imprisoned. Thousands of visitors from all over the country and the world, visit the Court each year, not only to watch justice being done, but to journey through a remarkable building filled with extraordinarily rich and soulful artwork. And always, visitors pause for some minutes, and sometimes cry, when they see the Blue Dress.

The work on the cover of this book commemorates the courage of Phila Ndwandwe and Harald Sefola whose deaths during the Struggle were described to the Truth and Reconciliation Commision by their killers.

Phila Ndwandwe was shot by the security police after being kept naked for weeks in an attempt to make her inform on her comrades. She preserved her dignity by making panties of of a blue plastic bag. This garment was found wrapped around her pelvis when she was exhumed. ‘She simply would not talk’, one of the policeman involved in her death testified. ‘God…she was brave.’

…I wept when I heard Phila’s story, saying to myself, ‘I wish I could make you a dress.’ Acting on this childlike response, I collected discarded blue plastic bags that I sewed into a dress. On its skirt I painted this letter:

Sister, a plastic bag may not be the whole armour of God, but you were wrestling with flesh and blood, and against powers, against the rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in sordid places. Your weapons were your silence and a piece of rubbish. Finding that bag and wearing it until you were disinterred is such a frugal, common-sensical, house-wifey thing to do, an ordinary act…At some level you shamed your captors, and they did not compound their abuse by stripping you a second time. Yet they killed you. We only know your story because a sniggering man remembered how brave you were. Memorials to your courage are everywhere; they blow about in the streets and drift on the tide and cling to thorn-bushes. This dress is made from some of them. Hamba kahle. Umkhonto.

Roger Scruton is currently Research Professor for the Institute for the Psychological Sciences where he teaches philosophy at their graduate school in both Washington and Oxford. He is a writer, philosopher, and public commentator and has specialized in aesthetics with particular attention to music and architecture. In his book Beauty, Scruton explores various notions of beauty and comes to the conclusion that beauty is not determined by subjective feelings, but universal values that are rooted in rational thought. In the following excerpt Scruton  discusses beauty in the form of art.

A century ago Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal with the name ‘R. Mutt’, entitled it ‘La Fontaine’, and exhibited it as a work of art. One immediate result of Duchamp’s joke was to precipitate an intellectual industry devoted to answering the question ‘What is art?’ The literature of this industry is as tedious as the never-ending imitations of Duchamp’s gesture. Nevertheless, it has left a residue of scepticism. If anything can count as art, what is the point or the merit in achieving that label? All that is left is the curious but unfounded fact that some people look at some things, others look at others. As for the suggestion that there is an enterprise of criticism, which searches for objective values and lasting monuments to the human spirit, this is dismissed out of hand, as depending on a conception of the art-work that was washed down the drain of Duchamp’s ‘fountain’.

The argument is eagerly embraced, because it seems to emancipate people from the burden of culture, telling them that all those venerable masterpieces can be ignored with impunity, that TV soaps are ‘as good as’ Shakespeare and Radiohead the equal of Brahms, since nothing is better than anything and all claims to aesthetic value are void. The argument therefore chimes with the fashionable forms of cultural relativism, and defines the point from which university courses in aesthetics tend to begin – and as often as not the point at which they end.

There is useful comparison to be made here with jokes. It is as hard to circumscribe the class of jokes as it is the class of artworks. Anything is a joke if somebody says so. A joke is an artefact made to be laughed at. It may fail to perform its function, in which case it is a joke that ‘falls flat’. Or it may perform its function, but offensively, in which case it is a joke ‘in bad taste’. But none of this implies that the category of jokes is arbitrary, or that there is no such thing as a distinction between good jokes and bad. Nor does it in any way suggest that there is no place for the criticism of jokes, or for the kind of moral education that has an appropriate sense of humour as its goal. Indeed, the first thing you might learn, in considering jokes, is that Marcel Duchamp’s urinal was one – quite a good one first time round, corny by the time of Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes and downright stupid today.

Jennifer Fisher, is Associate Professor of Dance, University of California, Irvine, and co-editor of When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders with Anthony Shay, Assistant Professor of Dance and Cultural Studies at Pomona College.  The book offers a progressive vision that boldly articulates double-standards in gender construction within dance and brings hidden histories to light in a globalized debate.  In the original article below Fisher looks at the Tom DeLay’s appearance on “Dancing with the Stars.”  You can watch the video of his appearance here.

It would be easy to say that Republicans shouldn’t dance because they are out of step with the times, so I won’t say that. Exactly. But sometimes, dance metaphors are really useful—like when you’re confronted with the image of former house majority leader Tom DeLay, who shook his booty as a contestant on this season’s “Dancing with the Stars.” It has to make you wonder if dancing doesn’t always reveal more than we suspect it might. It’s true that the popular TV series has traditionally been used to boost the image of fading or disgraced “personalities,” along with some merely adventurous athletes and soap stars, but this had to be a first. It was not only a moment designed to sell the products in commercials between the action (because it is, after all, television), it was one to make us ponder who should be dancing and who should not, bless their publicity seeking hearts.

I used to get a big laugh when I invited my dance history students to imagine a world in which then-president George W Bush had to study dancing in order to look powerful on the ballroom floor. That’s what world leaders from Louis XIV to George Washington had to do, in an age when a manly image did not exclude the wearing of silk brocade breeches and mastering the art of the pirouette. Alas, guys just don’t dance now if they want to be taken seriously as world leaders—they have to keep both feet on the ground, like John Wayne would have if he’d held elected office. A shame, really. Leaders in many locations in Africa, of course, have always danced to look powerful, taking up space, keeping their own rhythm, ruling a whole bunch of people not afraid to move.

But in today’s American political climate, nearly every man fears looking dorky while dancing—just picture Bush in that youtube clip trying to “get down” with between an African drummer and dancer on Africa Malaria Day. It’s no wonder it’s impossible for my students to imagine a conservative man in a suit who can let his hair down and boogie in flashy clothes like John Travolta. Could a solid but goofy looking Republican dip his partner? Let his backbone slip? Bust a serious move? The very idea was hilarious. And yet, in an odd twist of fate, this fantasy became reality on “Dancing with the Stars”. Tom DeLay actually became the poster boy for Republicans gone wild. When he made his first entrance as a contestant, wagging his nether regions and playing air guitar to the strains of “Wild Thing,” it was hard to know where to look. Maybe the intent was to look fun and vulnerable. He only succeeded in looking out of step.

Of course, because there is always a need for “news of the very weird” somewhere between the real news and the sports, we had been prepared for the event. Journalists must have burned the midnight oil winnowing down the number of catch phrases to describe it—“Republican Steps Left,” “The Hammer does the Hustle,” and, more to the point, “DeLay dances back into the limelight.” After all, no one mistook Delay’s decision to compete on a TV dance competition as a bid to master another skill or find his next career as a comedian. “Dancing with the Stars” is all about gaining visibility for the “stars” (the personalities) and, for the producers, it’s all about selling products with personal tales of triumph over the odds. Very quickly, dance metaphors in the press pointed to the real subject—partisan politics and a possible comeback for the disgraced politician. “DeLay dances all over the leaderless GOP,” one said after DeLay was interviewed, and “Delay cha-cha-ing back into the GOP fray.”

Stephen Colbert came up with a joke about how DeLay “gerrymandered” the bones in his feet in preparation for the competition—not a great laugh but a reminder about the fact that the former congressman had been accused of gerrymandering schemes and was indicted by a Texas grand jury for breaking campaign finance laws. “DeLay is no wild thing,” his reviews said, and surely they were referring to his terpsichorean skills rather than trying to counter the allegations that shadowed his political career. Or were they?

In the process of covering this painful (for dance lovers) DeLay dance debut, a lot was revealed about perceptions of dance, as well as the fear most men have of dancing. A few examples: An ABC interviewer started out by pointing out that DeLay’s daughter is a professional dancer, but DeLay himself was a very serious guy, so how did he put the two things together? Strike one for the seriousness of dance. But that wasn’t the point. DeLay answered that conservatives can also let their hair down and have fun. Strike two—we’ve all seen Bush wave his hands in imitation of dance and Obama sway with the instincts of the adept, so we know not everyone has success letting their hair down. Strike three was a rhetorical slip when Delay responded to, “Why go on Dancing with the Stars?” He said, “I love dancin’, I’ve been dancin’ all my life—I haven’t danced for about 20 years, but I love dancin’.” Yes, congressman, but are you or have you ever been a member of a dancing party? Dance-wise, he should have taken the fifth before he proved so inconsistent a witness.

But, you say, give the guy a break—he gave dancing a try, big-time. At least you might have said that after seeing him struggle in that “Wild Thing” number (check youtube if your stomach is strong). Does that make him part of that maverick breed of American men who don’t care about the “real men don’t dance” stereotype? It’s a very brave category of individualists who choose to dance despite the obstacles for men. It takes a man who is secure of his masculinity to let go of the iron man mentality and embrace his softer, more bodily articulate side. Now, they are brave, bucking macho trends and creating new visions of what men can do. Is Tom DeLay one such guy? Nah. In a pre-show interview, DeLay exhibited the classic timid male fear of sequins and pink and, although there was much kidding about developing his “feminine side,” this seems more of a gimmick that a growth experience for the man who’s house when he was a bachelor used to be known as “Macho Manor.”

You want to give him credit for wearing a sequin lined vest for his first cha-cha appearance, and for the sheer nerve of risking choreography in an arena where he couldn’t hide his incompetence. But then you feel an agenda somewhere, based on the knowledge of DeLay’s past views and inflexibility. Somehow, his dancing doesn’t look like he’s learning how to go with the flow or make a move in the right direction. It looks a whole lot more like faking it to get attention. “The body never lies,” Martha Graham said famously. But the jury is still out on that one.

Gerald Klickstein is Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and a renowned classical guitarist. His book, The Musician’s Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness, is a roadmap to artistic excellence which provides an inclusive system for all instrumentalists and vocalists to advance their musical abilities and succeed as performing artists.  In the excerpt below we learn about the value of being prepared.

When I play, I make love – it is the same thing.
-Arthur Rubinstein, pianist

If you’ve read much about performing, then you’ve probably run into the terms “peak performance,” “flow,” and “being in the zone.” Those synonymous labels refer to a zone of optimal functioning, an ideal inner state in which a performer achieves maximum fluency with minimum effort. When you’re having a peak experience with your music, your creativity seems boundless, and, technically speaking, you feel as though you can’t miss.

Discussions of peak performance now appear widely, and all of the talk has spawned a problematic myth. The premise of the myth is that all high-level performances are peak performances and that, therefore, unless a musician attains a peak inner state on stage, the performance falls short. Nothing could be further from reality.

Musicians deliver inspired performances when they’re in all sorts of inner states. Sometimes things flow easily, sometimes they don’t, and a performer works harder to execute with artistry and precision. Being in the zone is pleasant, but it’s beside the point. Art is the point, emotion-laden, penetrating art, irrespective of whether the musician is in the zone.

To put it another way, when you perform, the music and the audience are what count. Whether you’re cruising effortlessly or working through every phrase isn’t relevant to the music’s impact or the audience’s experience. An analogous example would be the athlete who scores a winning goal. The team is victorious, and no one cares whether the scorer was in the zone or whether she wrestled with a throbbing headache and a loosely tied shoe. Correspondingly, when an audience is transported by beautifully presented music, it’s unimportant whether the musician performed with ease or had to content with distracting thoughts and a stubborn itch. Of course, every performer wants to be as free as possible on stage. But if you can’t perform well unless you’re in a peak state, then you can’t function as a professional musician.

To reach professional standards in your music making, you have to be able to prepare such that you don’t require ideal circumstances to play or sing expertly. You need the flexibility to adapt to varied internal and external situations and then perform without a fuss. The musicians who lack preparatory skills fall apart when things aren’t just so. After going bust on stage, they often claim that in an earlier practice session they were in the zone and performed flawlessly. Actually, their fragile learning creates only an illusion of control. Because of their belief in the peak-performance myth, however, rather than improving their preparation skills, such musicians look for extraneous ways to induce a zone-like sate in which their flimsy foundations might somehow hold up.

To counter the peak-performance myth, I propose the thorough-preparation principle: When you prepare thoroughly, you don’t need to be in the zone to excel in performance, yet your security provides you with the most direct route into the zone (not that being in the zone matters). For example, if you’re a thoroughly prepared string player performing in a cold church and your fingers feel stiff, you don’t despair. You breathe and lead yourself through the music. Your fingers may by icy, but your spirit catches fire, and the music soars. Were you in the zone? Nobody cares, including you.

The peak-performance myth infects countless budding artists with a self-defeating attitude toward public performance. First, musicians may wrongly believe that getting into the zone is essential to performing. Second, instead of celebrating concerts as unique events, they rate them as peak or not peak, and by default, as either acceptable or unacceptable. It’s perfectionism by another name.

To make the most of a performance, the key is to be open to your experience and to discover new things in both the music and yourself. Author Jack Kornfield wrote, “This capacity to be open to the new in each moment without seeking a false sense of security is the true source of strength and freedom in life.” It’s also the true source of artistry on stage.

That brings me back to the quotation that begins this article. For Arthur Rubinstein, performing and lovemaking were of the same stuff. What did he mean by that? For one thing, I think he was conveying the sense of immersion that an artistic performer enjoys on stage. That is, when you hold someone closely, you don’t judge; you hug and let your emotions take over. As you perform, adopt an equally accepting attitude. Prepare thoroughly, and then embrace the music, audience, and performance situation, whatever they bring. Your listeners will thank you for it.

I’m having a rough day so I thought it might help my mood to browse through the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations edited by Ned Sherrin.  Below are some quotes the restored the smile to my face.

Mistakes and Misfortunes

“My only solution for the problem of habitual accidents…is to stay in bed all day.  Even then, there is always the chance that you will fall out.” – Robert Benchley 1889-1945: Chips off the old Benchley (1949) ‘Safety Second’

on premature calls of a win in Florida in the presidential election of 20oo:
“We don’t just have egg on our face.  We have omelette all over our suits.” – Tom Brokaw 1940-: in Atlanta Constitution-Journal 9 November 2000.

“I was mistaken for a prostitute once in the last war.  When a GI asked me what I charged, I said, “Well, dear, what do your mothers and sisters normally ask for?” – Thora Hird 1911-2003: in Independent 27 February 1999

“If we had had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.” – Leon Trotsky 1878-1940: My Life (1930).

Technology

“No man can hear his telephone ring without wishing heartily that Alexander Graham Bell had been run over by an ice wagon at the age o four.” – H. L. Mehken 1880-1956: Marion Elizabeth Rodgers Mencken: The American Iconoclast (2005)

“Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major categories – those that don’t work,those that break down, and those that get lost.” – Russel Baker 1925- : In New York Times 18 June 1968.

“The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.” – Paul Ralph Ehrlich 1932- : in Saturday Review 5 June 1971.

“The thing with high-tech is that you always end up using scissors.” – David Hockney 1937- : in Observer 10 July 1994 ‘Sayings of the Week’

Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, is the author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical From Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber.  The book offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America’s best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals, as well as a riveting history.  In the excerpt below we learn about how Hammerstein mentored Sondheim.

Sondheim, a native New Yorker whose father could play harmonized show tunes by ear after hearing them once or twice, was the beneficiary of a precocious, suitably specialized musical education.  While still a teenager and shortly after the premiere of Carousel, Sondheim had the opportunity to be critiqued at length be the legendary Hammerstein, who, by a fortuitous coincidence that would be the envy of Show Boat’ second act, happened to be a neighbor and the father of Sondheim’s friend and contemporary, James Hammerstein.  Sondheim’s unique apprenticeship with the first of his three great mentors, Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, one of the giants of the Broadway musical from the 1920s until long after his death in 1960, might serve as a Hegelian metaphor for Sondheim’s thesis, antithesis, and synthesis of modernism and traditionalism, high-brow and low-brow. His great aesthetic achievements have been as a loyal revolutionary (not unlike Beethoven) who thoroughly engaged with-rather than rejected-Broadway’s richest traditions. Before his collaborations with three major composers in this tradition as well as Robbins and Laurents and Merman, Sondheim was able to learn invaluable lessons about the craft of Broadway from one its greats pioneers. Sondheim never forgot Hammerstein’s priceless lessons in how to write and how not to write a musical. To help his student develop his craft and discover his own voice, Hammerstein suggested that Sondheim write four kinds of musicals to develop his craft. For the next six years Sondheim would attempt to follow this advice.

Some of what Sondheim learned about lyric writing and dramatic structure from the master soon became available to musical theater aficionados when Hammerstein published a seminal essay on the subject in 1949. One central premise stated early in the essay is Hammerstein’s conviction that “a song is a wedding of two crafts.” Later, Hammerstein articulates the importance of “very close collaboration during the planning of a song and the story that contains the song” and espouses the view that “the musician is just as much an author as the man who writes the words.” The resulting marriage of music and words, the welding of two crafts and talents “into a single expression” is for Hammerstein “the great secret of the well-integrated musical play.” Unlike Hammerstein, Sondheim would assume two mantles, author and musician-although, unlike his mentor, Sondheim did not write the librettos for any of his Broadway shows.

Throughout the course of his essay Hammerstein explores a number of the issues and ideas about theatrical songwriting that did not go unnoticed by his student and neighbor. For example, Hammerstein advocates what we might call a non-operatic approach to the musical that maintains clear and sharp distinctions between spoken dialogue and song. With few exceptions, and in marked contrast to his popular contemporary Lloyd Webber, Sondheim has followed this approach ever since. Hammerstein also never wavered from his conviction “that the song is the servant of the play” and “that it is wrong to write first what you think is an attractive song and then try to wedge it into a story.” His protégé would follow this advice well, in fact unwaveringly for the next forty years…

…A quarter of a century later Sondheim published some of his own thoughts about lyric writing adapted from a talk he simply called “Theater Lyrics” first given to the Dramatists Guild and then later published in a slightly altered form in the collection Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers, on Theatre. On the first page of this talk in its published form Sondheim informs his audience and readers that most of what he knows he learned from Hammerstein, his first mentor (although he acknowledges the example of other lyricists, including Cole Porter).  Sondheim recalls that the mentorship officially began when Hammerstein critiqued a draft of a musical called By George, a musical à clef about the preparatory school where the young protégé was then a junior.

What Hammerstein taught the novice at their historic first session not only encompassed lyric writing but also addressed larger dramatic issues.  This is how Sondheim recalled his lesson nearly thirty years later: “Detail by detail, he told me how to structure songs, how to build them with a beginning and a development and an ending, according to his own principles, how to introduce a character, what relates a song to a character, etc. etc.  It was four hours of the most packed information.  I dare say, at the risk of hyperbole, that I learned in that afternoon more than some people learn about song writing in a lifetime.”  Some of what his teacher told him (e.g., the remarks on rhyming, phonetics, and sincerity quoted earlier) appeared a few years later in Hammerstein’s essay.  Over the years Sondheim also often repeated Hammerstein’s anecdote about the importance of detail, which was inspired by his mentor’s astonishment when he learned that the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty carefully detailed the top of Lady Liberty’s head long before it was possible to anticipate the popularity of photographs of the iconic image from above…

Stephen Gundle is Professor of Film and Television Studies at Warwick University, and has written widely on European culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing on the mass media, the cultural aspects of politics, and the impact of American modernity on European popular culture. His latest book, Glamour: A History, is recently published in paperback, and below is an excerpt from the book, dicussing the glamour of the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

You can read Professor Gundle’s previous OUPblog post here.

When Lady Diana Spencer became engaged to Prince Charles in February 1981, she was a young woman from an aristocratic family whose modest education and limited experience of life were reflected in her demure appearance. A pretty and naïve 19-year-old, she seemed the archetypal English Rose. Thrust unknowingly into the media spotlight, she quickly became the nation’s darling. Her wedding to Prince Charles in St Paul’s Cathedral in July 1981 was given blanket press coverage and was watched by an estimated worldwide television audience of one billion people. The marriage was presented as a fairy-tale union of an eligible prince and a beautiful commoner, the aristocratic standing and royal ancestors of Diana’s family receiving less emphasis than her more commonplace status as a young working woman. A decade later, Diana’s public image was quite different. Her marriage to Charles bore two sons, but by the late 1980s it was on the rocks. The Prince and Princess of Wales formally separated in December 1992 and were divorced in 1996. Throughout this period, the press scrutinized every aspect of their body language and public appearances, separately and together, for indications of the state of their relationship. Both the prince and Diana briefed the press through friends and blamed each other for the breakdown of the marriage. Public sympathy was firmly with Diana and the affection for her was amply demonstrated in the emotional public reaction to her death following a car accident in Paris in August 1997. As she emerged from the shadow of her husband, Diana invested ever more energy in charitable works. Having herself suffered from the acrimonious divorce of her parents, and living the breakdown of her own marriage, she was in a position to offer comfort to others. Subsequently, she helped publicize the international campaign against landmines and to overcome discrimination against AIDS sufferers. Like a secular Mother Teresa of Calcutta, with whom she established a connection, she became identified with selfless devotion to the causes of the ill and suffering.

Diana was not originally associated with glamour. Mainly, she was presented within the framework of royalty. In the course of the twentieth century, the British royal family had had a complex relationship with glamour. It had flirted with the press, the movies, and publicity, but fundamentally it remained a thing apart, an institution that was theatrical, certainly, but respectable and not a little stodgy. Its capacity to enchant was founded on history and tradition, and was more ceremonial than personal. Thus Diana’s spectacular wedding endowed her with a conventional aura, that of the fairy-tale princess. With its puffed sleeves, nipped waist, embroidered pearls and sequins, and 25-foot taffeta train, the bride’s creamy silk dress contributed to the fantasy. The pomp of the wedding impressed not only the thousands who lined the streets leading to St Paul’s, but the millions who watched the ceremony on television or read about it in the press. Over time, Diana’s image evolved as she became more womanly and the press found that use of her image never failed to boost sales beyond measure. Designers competed to dress her and magazines ran features on her wardrobe, knowing that women regarded her as an inspiration. In subsequent years, as she acquired an independent profile and began to detach herself from the royal family, her conventional aura was displaced by glamour. She became a figure of beauty and style whose photogenic qualities turned her into the most photographed person of the age. Speculation about her love life in the final stages of her marriage and in the period prior to her death intensified interest in her to the point that almost her every move was tracked by paparazzi.

Diana’s beauty was central to the transition she made from demure and virginal princess to woman of glamour. Her girlish good looks at the time of her courtship and engagement drew some favourable comment but no one in those early days saw her as a great beauty. Rather, Diana grew into her body, which she turned by sheer dint of effort into one of her main tools of communication. A tall and well-proportioned woman, her appearance became splendid; she was toned, tanned, slim, blonde, and radiant and at no time more so than in the five years between her separation and her death. ‘Providence gave her beauty, but it was she who contrived to project it until it radiated to every quarter of the globe,’ noted the historian Paul Johnson in the days after her death. The most important thing about her in this regard was that she was superbly photogenic. ‘This was not merely beauty,’ commented another senior male observer; ‘this was beauty that lept through the lenses. She seemed chemically bonded to film and video.’

The most remarkable series of photographic portraits appeared too late to shape responses to her, although they may have had some small influence on the reaction to her death. In 1997 Vanity Fair published in its July issue a series of pictures under the title ‘Princess Di’s New Look by Mario Testino’. The Peruvian photographer’s work ensured that she exited the world at the height of her splendour. More than any of his colleagues, Testino had a gift for giving his subjects an electric charge of fabulousness. They positively glowed and glistened and always looked like euphoric, yet not unnatural, versions of themselves. In Testino’s lens, Diana looked relaxed, rich (her rumoured £80,000 per annum grooming budget was evident in her beautiful skin, cropped and highlighted hair, and movie-star smile), and totally confident. The spectator could not but be mesmerized by her relaxed air and sleek surface. It took Diana some time to understand how she could use fashion to establish a public identity and communicate messages but, once she did, she harnessed its power to maximum effect. Her glamour was inextricably bound up with her dazzling use of fashion. In 1994 one newspaper estimated that her wardrobe had a value of around one million pounds. In fact, the charity auction of seventy-nine of her dresses in New York in June 1997 (for which the Testino photographs were a promotional pitch) raised a total of $3.25 million. As the Prince of Wales’s wife, her choice of designers was limited to the British or British-based, with exceptions being made only on royal visits for designers from the host countries. The London designers Catherine Walker and Bruce Oldfield were perhaps the first to see her glamour potential. They helped her forge a fashion identity that was varied but generally discreetly eye-catching during the day and fabulous for evening occasions. Diana dressed at first to please—to please above all her distracted husband by showing she could win the adoration of the gallery—but then increasingly for effect. Demure dresses gave way to striking red and black gowns, chic pastel combinations, and toned down looks for everyday charity work. By the mid-1990s, she had turned into a toned, tanned, and designer-clad blonde vision of incomparable allure. She wore international labels and showed a particular predilection for the creations of Gianni Versace, the Italian designer who was hailed after his murder in Miami Beach in July 1997 as the ‘king of glitz’. Versace showered her with suits and dresses and she became a regular customer at the label’s Bond Street store. She did not wear his starlet numbers but rather opted for the simple, sexy outfits that suited her fashion persona. One of the last memorable pictures of Diana is of her comforting a disconsolate Elton John at Versace’s funeral in the Duomo in Milan.

From the Cadillac to the Apple Mac, the skyscraper to the Tiffany lampshade, the world we live in has been profoundly influenced by the work of American designers. Below is an extract from Design in the USA by Jeffrey L. Meikle, part of the Oxford History of Art series, which discusses automobile design and the marketing strategies by Ford and General Motors in the 1920s.

The automobile was the most significant technology of the twentieth century, transforming the way almost all people lived, worked, and identified themselves. More than any other manufactured artefact, it engaged the attention of designers, of critics predicting design trends, and of anyone interested in the appearance of things. In 1916 the automotive engineer William B. Stout (1880-1956) observed that the motor car was no longer ‘merely a mechanism for traveling’ but ‘a part of the home equipment . . . standing at the door . . . reflect[ing] the personality and the taste of the home within’. Announcing that ‘style has come to the automobile’, he maintained that car manufacturers would soon ‘take every advantage of art knowledge’ to create ‘an appeal consistent with its mechanical performance’. The automobile was a luxury in 1916, with 3.4 million passenger cars registered, one for every 25 inhabitants. However, the success of the Model T Ford soon transformed popular fantasy into universal reality. Even then, one of every two new cars was a utilitarian Model T, first introduced in 1908, cheaply mass-produced on a moving assembly line since 1913, and sold for about $500. By 1928, there were more than 20 million automobiles registered, one for every six people. In the meantime style had become central to selling cars. For many Americans the focus of materialized identity had shifted outward from the relatively fixed traditional domesticity of the home to a perpetually changing public realm of technology. Eventually this outward machine-age gaze turned back inward to appliances and home furnishings, but the American love affair with the automobile was the start of it.

Evidence of design’s significance came in May 1927, when Henry Ford (1863–1947) shut down the vast River Rouge plant, an international symbol of industrial modernity, and quit making the Model T. He was reacting to competition from General Motors, whose low-end Chevrolet, only slightly more expensive than a Model T, sported a lower, more rounded, better integrated silhouette. The automotive market was approaching saturation. Most people who wanted cars already had them, and new car sales were mostly replacements for unstylish Model Ts. Despite Ford’s key role in industrialization, he was ambivalent about progress and had long considered the Model T as a tool for improving the lives of farmers. But Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (1875–1966), president of General Motors, recognized the automobile’s radical cultural novelty. He realized the public would reward a manufacturer who enabled them to drive inexpensive cars resembling the sleek, hand-crafted Auburns and Marmons of the upper class.

Sloan’s strategy at General Motors transformed the marketing of automobiles and the design of most other mass-produced consumer products. The first part of the strategy involved rationalizing the various brands GM had acquired through corporate takeovers. From the inexpensive Chevrolet up through Buick and La Salle to the most expensive Cadillac, there was a model for every price bracket and always something higher to aspire to. GM also perfected a system of ‘flexible mass production’, basing the different product lines on a limited number of chassis sizes and body types and differentiating them with minor cosmetic variations in fenders, bumpers, radiator grilles, chrome accents, and interior details, very much as the furniture makers of Grand Rapids had built up stylistically distinctive cabinets or bedsteads by adding layers of differing ornament to otherwise identical forms.

The second part of GM’s marketing strategy put this hierarchy of models into dynamic motion through time. The so-called annual model change, firmly established by 1927, was intended to stimulate demand by introducing minor styling changes into each model each year to create an impression of novelty even if a car’s mechanical functions remained essentially unchanged. Dramatic, newsworthy design changes occurred initially only in the most expensive models, thereby raising expectations among consumers who could afford only lower-priced models. In subsequent years such innovative details would migrate down the line, enabling even purchasers of the lowly Chevy to enjoy features recently limited to society’s economic elite—but subtly reinterpreted to reflect the presumed vulgarity of lower income groups.

Under Sloan’s guidance, General Motors developed an overarching design policy. In 1927 he established an Art and Color Section with a staff of 50. As director he appointed Harley Earl (1893–1969), a designer with experience creating custom auto bodies for Hollywood actors. Earl had just achieved a resounding success for GM with the 1927 La Salle, which boasted long front fenders, a roof gently rounded at the back, elongated side windows, and such elegant detailing as a chrome band between cowl and hood. As the Art and Color Section set to work on other GM models, the concept of the motor car as a thing of beauty, not merely of utility, became democratized. Using modelling clay over full-sized wooden forms, Earl’s stylists sculpted low-slung bodies notable for integrating the formerly disparate parts —engine and passenger compartments—of a closed automobile. These stylistic innovations exploited a shift in manufacturing from labour-intensive composite bodies of sheet metal on wooden frames to ‘all-steel’ bodies stamped in huge presses with dies whose wide-radiused curves encouraged a sculptural flair. Earl brought style to the masses.

Although developments at GM echoed for decades, immediate attention in 1927 focused on the Ford Motor Co. With journalists wondering whether Henry Ford would ever make another car, his associates were busy designing and tooling up for the Model A, introduced to great fanfare five months after the demise of the Model T. Although the new model was easier to shift and drive, endearing it to the increasing ranks of female drivers, stylistic improvements were modest. The Model A appeared somewhat sleeker, with lower road clearance, a longer wheelbase, bumpers of two flat parallel strips of chromed steel, a radiator with an elegantly curved frame, and a gently rakish backward slant. Even so, compared with GM’s bottom-of-the-line Chevrolet, there was nothing particularly innovative about the Model A. Its significance lay in the fact that America’s most famous industrialist, the inventor of the mass-production assembly line, had to spend $18 million on retooling just to keep pace with more artful competition.

Ford’s experience made an impression on other business executives who faced market saturation, consumer resistance, falling sales, and intense competition. Two out of three businessmen surveyed about the significance of ‘art and business’ spontaneously mentioned the Model A conversion as a cautionary tale. One executive referred to it as ‘the most expensive art lesson in history’, a phrase that carried special significance for those who heard his prepared remarks at a dinner meeting on 29 October 1929, the day the bottom fell out of the stock market. With the economy sliding from recession into depression, many manufacturers turned to product design, both as a means of overcoming competition in their own industries and later as a panacea for restoring the entire nation’s economic health.

Stephen Mansfield is an author and photojournalist who has been living on the edges of Tokyo since the late 1980s.  His book, Tokyo: A Cultural History, looks at how Tokyo grew from a fishing village along a marshy estuary to one of the world’s largest and most culturally vibrant metropolises.  We learn that for all its modernity and craving for the new, it is a city impregnated with the past.  In the excerpt below Mansfield looks at piece of Tokyo’s history that has lived on in literature.

An extraordinary event occurred in 1701 that electrified the entire city.  Because of its reverberations as both news and as a fitting subject for literature, the story is worth retelling.  Assigned to perform ceremonial duties at the shogun’s court in Edo, Lord Asano, a daimyo from the western domain of Ako, was provoked into attacking and injuring Lord Kira.  Though the reason for the provocation has never been satisfactorily explained, an oversight of etiquette, personal slight or grudge toward Kira – a condescending and spiteful superior by all accounts – have all been mooted.  Having violated the strict rule of court banning the drawing of weapons, Asano was commanded to commit immediate seppuku (ritual disembowelment).  With Asano’s death, his vassals automatically became ronin, masterless samurai stripped of crest, armour and a banner to serve under.  His estates were seized by the authorities, the family castle razed to the ground and his widow driven into taken refuge in a nunnery.

Smarting from humiliation, 47 of the ronin secretly swore to avenge his death.  Knowing that they would be under surveillance from the authorities, who posted spies to watch the men’s comings and goings, they took a full two years planning their revenge.  To allay suspicion, they took up jobs as carpenters, labourers and peddlers, work that would have been inconceivable for a samurai.  While quietly hatching a plan of action, Oishi Kuranosuke, Lord Asano’s former Elder Councillor, adopted a dissolute lifestyle, drinking and womanizing, a pretense that relaxed Kira’s guard.

During the winter of 1703, the ronin broke into Kira’s high-walled mansion at midnight.  After fierce fighting, in which all the guards and retainers were slaughtered, they searched the grounds for Kira, eventually finding him hiding in a charcoal shed in white satin sleeping robes.  After removing Kira’s head with the very sword that Lord Asano had used against him at court, they carried the trophy through the snow-blanketed streets of Edo, washed it in a well, which is still there today, and placed it on the grave of their master at Sengaku-ji temple.

While the public in general lauded this violent act of revenge as a heroic deed consistent with the samurai code of absolute loyalty, the shogunate was obliged by its own set of rules to punish the offenders for having assassinated a member of the court.  Rather than being decapitated, the fate of the common criminal, the 47 were, after long and spirited debates and deliberations among intellectuals and officials, granted the privilege of an honourable death by seppuku.

The story of the attack by the ronin appeared as a puppet play within weeks of the actual event, and example of the speed with which reality was transmuted into art and entertainment.  the story has inspired countless novels, Kabuki plays and films.  The best-known theatrical version is the puppet play Chushinguru (A Treasury of Loyal Retainers), first performed in 1748.  For reasons of censorship, the story was re-situated in the fourteenth century.  The poet John Masefield wrote a much inferior English version of the play called The Faithful.

Climbing the steps up to the time-weathered graves today, an acrid smell hangs in the air, the tombs banked up beneath clouds of smoke from incense sticks placed there by those who continue to honour the men.  Rudyand Kipling did just this in the spring of 1889, finding that “an animal of the name of V. Gay had seen fit to stratch his entirely uninteresting name” on one of the gold-leafed, lacquered panels of the tomb.  “It is not the handwriting upon the wall” he added: “Presently there wll be neither gold nor lacquer-nothing but the finger marks of foreigners.”

As a former childhood model who appeared on the cover of a Time/Life book, in the July 4th 1976 issue of the New York Times Magazine, in a few book of portraits by Duane Michals, and in a photo essay in the premier issue of Parenting Magazine, not to mention turning up as hotel art in DC and San Francisco, I have often felt a kindred spirit with Danny Bonaduce as my cutest, brightest moments piqued so early in my life. I am not bitter and do not miss the near celebrity I almost enjoyed from my modeling years, but I recently befriended a publicist at an imprint in the Penguin Group. Our paths crossed as we geared up to promote Ammon Shea’s Reading the OED and the OED’s 80th anniversary. A friendship grew out of our promotional efforts and now as I prepare my summer reading agenda, it has come to my attention that my friend is jacket candy on a forthcoming title from Berkley Trade (sounds so pornographic, yup that’s him in the jacket to the left). As former jacket candy myself I feel obligated to offer this advice to my friend. “T– put some clothes on for Pete’s sake. Stay young and beautiful if you want to be loved.”