Jonathan Meades c/d?

you've seen Nairn's London has been reissued?

I have ordered the Darly/McKie Words In Place book for a fiver, probably go for Nairn's London next.

it's good. like his series it's as much a documentary of a time as anything else, and a frustrating read in some ways. but walking down electric avenue this morning is an example that his words still hold true in many places, and where they do it's because people can live there and efforts have been made to ensure a city is what it should be - a place for everyone.

wonder whether electric avenue will be the same in ten years. (there's lottery money to do it up, and renovate the flats - and I still can't find out whether those renovated flats are intended to be public housing. they certainly need to be.)

It would seem completely corrupt to use lottery money to renovate private housing but saying that lots of private Victorian terraced houses in my area got free NT work done on them, which was a complete surface restoration and nice new wrought iron fences.

On Nairn's funeral, quite a poignant paragraph and reminds of some family funerals I have attended. I am sure I have been to St Georges Tavern before, whilst staying in Pimlico about 20 years ago.

There were few mourners that August day;in his last silent melancholy days (in reality, some years) he had been almost forgotten. But their number included both Nairn's widow Judy and his ex-wife Joan (Liz). The Group then repaired to his favourite haunt, St Georges Tavern, Pimlico. Peter Baistow's photograph showing Nairn wreathed in cigarette smoke with an army of empty beer glasses jostling on the table in front of him, was installed above his customary seat.
In the cemetery, Nairn lies beneath a standardised iron tablet, one of many, laid flat on the grass. But the legend on this one is most particular. At the top it reads Hora e Sempre (Now and Forever) and then, below the dates of birth and death, little more than 50 years apart, comes the phrase A Man Without A Mask. The words were chosen by Samuel Palmer to describe William Blake. They could have been written, with equal justice, then and forever about Ian Nairn.

Meades making a record w/ Mordant Music!

http://thequietus.com/articles/17394-jonathan-meades-announces-album

There is actually a random mention of Meades on the last eMMplekz album (You Might Also Like) on the track 'Bedrheum Raver 78', which also namedrops 0PN and seeing David Tibet in the laundrette.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4ZLKd3krJw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZGy3SQuPek

A rare old B S Johnson bbc rip. I recently watched his short tv film Fat Man On A Beach which I thought was a masterpiece. It is a shame he didn't make more television because he was suited to the medium.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ch7TreaWEAQFTQ6.jpg

Fabulous!

hahaha

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07d7nj9

His film about the architecture of Mussolini is on tonight.

wow, can't wait to see this.

that's this evening sorted then

his thoughts on "Mussolini's love of a fancy uniform" should be entertaining

I didn't even realise Il Duce had left a significant architectural legacy so it will be interesting. I always think of him as the bumbling incompetent of the axis powers without really reading much about him.

this was one of his in rome...

http://uk.phaidon.com/resource/fendimussoliniromelead.jpg

intriguing de chirico-esque quality to it

is that outside the city?

not outside the city but a bit south of the centre

ah cool, i am visiting rome soon...

will leave that derail for elsewhere!

it's the new hq for fendi:

http://cdn.harpersbazaar.com.sg/2015/10/SB1115Fashion_Fendi-TR477_HARPERS_SHOT_1_129_f10.jpg

Yes, it's in EUR. It's the most sinister building i have ever seen though it's difficult to put your finger on exactly why.

lol @ fendi. fashists.

didn't the Italian Fascist party have several futurist/surrealist artists as members in the 20's?

Albert Speer's dad, after seeing the insanely proportioned models his son had made for Hitler's proposed monumental Reich capitol of the world said "you two have gone mad".

yeah marinetti who founded italian futurism was famously fascist, similar thing with wyndham lewis here

I didn't even realise Il Duce had left a significant architectural legacy so it will be interesting. I always think of him as the bumbling incompetent of the axis powers without really reading much about him.

Not sure if he built the first motorways in the world or he just took the credit for them (see Boris' Bikes).

Wow he managed to build the whole Autostrada network without any Irish labour:p

EUR is fascinating - was there a couple of weeks ago. Also staying in Garbatella, a really idiosyncratic 1920s planned garden community. Plenty of these experiements across Europe, representing a form of social and political hope that feels a bit fucking distant these days.

forgot about this. have set recorder for the 3am repeat. i expect there'll be a little man in the corner waving his hands.

Mussolini amirite

the link upthread mentions he previously did programs dedicated to Soviet/Nazi architecture, wtf the are they called? i can't find them on torrents nor i-player. Fwiw I thought this was one of the best things he has done.

they're called 'Jerry Building' and 'Joe Building', they're both up in full on youtube

nice one thanks. God I still have i-player on in the background and Marr is burbling about Churchill's Sunday painting, how fucking stagnant in comparison.

This was brilliant - he definitely seemed a bit more fired up.

I still can't believe his opening line, to scenes of people gathering to see Mussolini's corpse and sound effects of swirling winds, was "God, Allah, Yahweh, these nightmarish psychopaths attain immortality without ever having lived". Like that's pretty wild for primetime on the Beeb. It made me laugh out loud.

He has always had those provocations in his films, though he has seemed notably more cantankerous over the last ten or so years and more invested in baiting the left as well as the religious. This was great, though, and one show every three or four years is nowhere near enough.

He is definitely better suited to the more expansive hour and a half length type program.

Yeah I guess it's always provocative, I still felt as the opening line that was bolder. There are always things he doesn't flesh out which seem vaguely disagreeable but the sum of the parts and the style is so brilliant. The humour is unique to him.

only had time to watch half of it. maybe i don't watch the right documentaries, but it was good to watch a bbc arts programme that wasn't an stream of random talking heads. otoh it would have been p funny to get mani's views on what a top lad benito was in the studio.

Actually "all for one, one for all, if we all join hands we can build a wall" would be an apt soundtrack to a programme on fascist architecture

Did catch a bit of these new puritans though

fascinating as ever but flawed in his analysis of the (anti)politics of fascism IMO, it was much better when he was actually talking about the architecture

the sign language for 'hitler' is just as you'd imagine:

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/yk8342wl9066y34/AAC7y64BexyWCH6IdV27HzpRa

and iplayer reminds me there are 23 programmes about post war architecture available for viewing in their archive

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p01s0hpy

ooh good find, that Ian Nairn series looks worth a watch

Definitely. It is a delight.

The entire Jonathan Meades Collection is all out there in the torrent world as well, although for some reason that doesn't include his Nazi/Soviet architecture episodes.

there was a dvd box set but they had trouble with clearing some of the music iirc

it would have been p funny to get mani's views on what a top lad benito was in the studio.

didn't meades call franco a "lad" at one point in this? i was going to try post that on nakh's wall. felt like he'd been reading ilx.

dank meades