Welcome to my fourth and final Showcase for December. I’ve loved putting these pages together and I hope they have entertained and informed you in some way. My thanks go to Editor Madeleine F White and her Deputy, Claire Buss, for holding my hand throughout the process plus, of course, all our wonderful contributors, without whom we wouldn’t exist! Season’s greetings to you all from me and the Write On! Extra team.

Let’s start off with a fun piece from regular contributor, Vic Howard, who poses the timeless question: What is art?

 

What Is Raspberry Tart?

Sorry. My Cockney origins like to show themselves every now and again. What I meant to say was: “What is art?”  OK. I realise that’s a bit like asking: “Why are we here?” but the question arose in my mind again when I saw that a banana, duct-taped to a canvas, was recently sold for several million gold pieces or the equivalent. The artwork had been displayed around the world, during which time the banana had frequently rotted and been replaced. It reminded me of my grandfather’s axe, which I keep for sentimental reasons, although the head has been replaced once and the handle at least twice since he owned it. What odd creatures we humans are.

What do you think of when you think of art? Probably a painting of some kind, though art can be interpreted in many ways: watercolour, drawing, sculpture, dance, words, etc. – the list is endless. The next question might be: “What is art worth?” Why does one piece of canvas with paint on it fetch millions, while another is worthless? Art forgery is one of the world’s biggest industries and there are many brilliant forgers. It’s said that at least half the art in the world’s museums is forged. As long as they remain anonymous the forger’s work can be sold for large sums, but once revealed as forgery it becomes worthless; yet unchanged. Wherein does the value lie, the physical material, the subject matter or the idea that was once held by the person who painted it? So many unanswerable questions.

To come back to my original question, the artist Wayne Thiebaud made a successful career from painting pictures of cakes and tarts. Galleries refused to show his work for fear of ridicule, until one took the plunge and launched Thiebaud into fame and his many patrons into happiness. He died at the age of 101. I bet he didn’t have a sweet tooth!

It’s a great pity, I think, that art is not simply appreciated for the physical experience of pleasing the eye or stimulating the senses in some way, or for the skill needed to make it; or vice versa. My unmade bed is just as good as Dame Tracey Emin’s, though she calls her bed art and became an RA on the strength of it. She has said that what she does is art because she says it is. She has my boundless admiration for fooling the art establishment so successfully.

Art has become a commodity for investment and investments are only worth what other people think they are worth. A person who buys a painting and stores it in a bank vault awaiting resale at a profit is not interested in its artistic qualities. What would Monet, da Vinci, Picasso or any of the other famous names have said about that situation? I wonder. In the case of Picasso, I suspect he would have laughed loudly. When a Nazi SS officer once looked at Picasso’s Guernica and asked: “Did you do this?” Picasso said: “No. You did!” Art can be extremely powerful sometimes. Think of Otto Dix or George Grosz, who portrayed the tragedies of WWI and Weimar Germany, or the many artists who have documented wars around the world. Their work is priceless in its importance, yet financially of little interest compared with three bars of colour by Mark Rothko or a banana stuck to a white canvas.

So, what is art? I think it’s what you like best. “I know what I like” is usually laughed at as being the call of the Philistine. But if you think an unmade bed is unattractive and worthless but a painting of a raspberry tart makes you smile and your mouth water, then I think you probably appreciate art. The moral of this tale, if there is one, is: don’t be fooled by the experts. Your opinion is valuable. Never think that you know nothing about art. If you appreciate it, then it is art.

A true story:

My first visit to the Royal Academy was 60 years ago. I was walking down Piccadilly when I suddenly felt I needed a lavatory. I was passing the RA and thought they probably had public toilets available, so I walked in and was not disappointed. Chalked on one wall of the stall was a drawing of two cubes and underneath were the words: Balls to Picasso! I was impressed by the upmarket level of graffiti, but felt confused. Was it an opinion, or a statement of fact?

© Vic Howard, 2024

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Now, Danny Baxter addresses the right to disagree with one another. We all have our own opinions, often formed from a very early age, and have to learn that not everyone else will be shouting from the same page. Do you agree?

Agree To Disagree

You have to agree to agreeing to disagree.
It’s not a given,
Or a right.
Both sides have to share some kind of appreciation of the advantage,
Of the benefit of leaving a disagreement unresolved.
Sometimes that advantage, that benefit is outweighed by the cost,
A cost to you or to others that you may not be willing to pay.
Sometimes you aren’t given the privilege,
Or even the opportunity,
But developing the capacity to leave things hanging…
…is certainly a pursuit with merit,
Because some disagreements aren’t worth falling out over.
Some disagreements aren’t appropriate for the spaces they are conducted in or the platforms they are broadcast on,
And some disagreements aren’t worthy of the time it would take to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
Simple things to acknowledge, but in the heat of the moment it’s easy to forget.
That’s how needless conflicts are initiated,
And how disagreement turns into division,
And division turns into conflict.
It is always good to be aware with where you agree with an opponent.
That frames an argument and keeps it based in reality,
Not letting it form its own gravity,
To pull you in,
Out of your own orbit,
And assimilate you.
Sometimes the only agreement you can hope for is the agreement to disagree,
But in most cases, aiming for this should be enough.

© Danny Baxter, 2024

Connect with Danny on Instagram: @dan_lbbd

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What is the Big Day itself without the Big Lunch? It’s hard to imagine. Usually, my partner and I cook turkey-with-all-the-trimmings for ourselves but, this year, we’re joining in with a local community lunch and I’m looking forward to someone else doing all the work. After reading this poem by Josephine Renton, my mouth is already watering in anticipation!

Christmas Dinner

The turkey was done as brown as could be
He’d been hours in the oven, that was agreed.
His chest filled with chestnuts,
His backside with sage
Just like the bird on the recipe page.

It was now covered in foil, just to cool down.
It was definitely the very best turkey in town.
The sprouts were now simmering
The roast spuds were done
And the swede and the mash were like feathery buns.

The gravy was poured, made of giblets and such,
And the plates heated up, but just a small touch.
Then the turkey was carved
With large slices of ham
But we’d nearly forgotten the cranberry jam.

When the crackers were pulled, and the soup had been served
The time had arrived to enjoy slices of bird.
Surrounded by sprouts,
Roast potatoes and swede,
Enough food for the biblical five thousand to feed.

But the feast was not finished, and more wine was poured
As the blue flame of the pudding was duly adored.
Followed by custard and trifle with  much fruit and cream.
A slim and lithe figure has become now a dream.

© Josephine Renton, 2024 

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Much of Christmas is about expectations. I think our next piece, by Ruby Lydford, though set in August, is an interesting way of looking at this. In contrast to our previous poem, this takes on a more sombre mood.

Undefined Expectations

To Eleanor, there were more evenings than daytimes. This was a thought many of her friends connected to the short winter daylight savings in the late year. However, even in August, the number of opportunistic hours felt limited.

In the evenings, she’d sit alone in her bedroom, in the centre of the crowded city, trying to think about nothing at all – largely unsuccessfully. Unnamed anxiety usually bled into her flat, light seeping in around the gaps between the curtains and the window, soaking her.

She felt as though she ought to be doing something, that she had known the specific task a mere moment ago but had forgotten and could not recall it now. Often, she associated this feeling with drawing pictures in coloured felt tips, cutting out all the shapes, and using scissors and glue to assemble the final project. Yet, as she was about to begin, she could never remember what the final product was meant to be. She’d tried a scrapbook, and then a journal, and then writing reviews for books or albums for no one to read, yet none of these sedated her anxious dissatisfaction.

Last summer, she’d returned to her parents and had an expanse of time long enough to make an attempt to reconcile this feeling, but it had only resulted in her taking up a string of unrelated, random, behaviours: alphabetising bookshelves, repurchasing dolls’ missing shoes, pressing garden plants, to then not know what to do with them once they were dried. She thought about how she wished it were a crisp autumn in the heat of the summer, and a golden summer during the dark of the autumn. She finally concluded, with others’ insight, that this behaviour was largely unproductive and ‘rather strange’.

So she’d stopped. The undefined expectations would remain undefined. Periodically, she sedated herself with an excess of media, until she was saturated. In the beginning, it was substantial stuff she was consuming. Eventually, it became six-second clips.

She believed many people felt this difference between expectation and reality, but thought it extended further than that. There was a difference between how people saw her and who she actually was. The Eleanor people perceived was productive, able to cleverly converse in independent bars and artisan coffee shops and to be deeply thoughtful and creative – even when in isolation. But the Eleanor she knew herself to be was simply a consumer, just like everyone else.

© Ruby Lydford, 2024

Connect with Ruby on Instagram: @rubylydford

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Here’s a small snippet of my own writing for you. The full feature was first published online in The Advantages Of Age Substack earlier this month and I have since added it to my blog: claredotcooper@wordpress.com. Titled Christmas Reflections, that’s where you can  read it in its entirety. Recalling so many of my childhood Christmases proved quite an emotional rollercoaster for me, and a fair few tears were shed in the process. I wish with all my heart that I could go back there, even if only for a day. I would relish every second of being in the company of those friends, neighbours and family members who have now left us. In fact, a mere day wouldn’t be long enough! What would you do, if you could go back?

Christmas Reflections (Extract)

I’ve never since managed to recapture that intense, almost unbearable tension, excitement and anticipation I felt as a child waiting for Christmas to begin. (In fact, these days I can’t wait for it all to be over.) One memorable year, when my sister and I were still quite young, we woke up at two o’clock in the morning and saw the enticingly bulging pillowcases at the foot of our beds. Santa had been! Unable to contain ourselves, we opened everything inside, then went back to bed. I still remember the terrible flat feeling when I woke up a few hours later and realised I had no surprises left. We never did that again.

It’s hard to imagine now but, back then, everything ground to a halt for two days and there was no such thing as online shopping and 24/7 deliveries, so if you’d not got enough milk, bread or loo rolls in  – tough. Although, we all watched in baffled fascination as TV film crews spoke to the stalwart men and women who were prepared to queue throughout Christmas, and often in bitingly cold snowy weather, outside Harrods or Selfridges for their famous Boxing Day sales and a half-price fur coat or colour television (something not all of us had). For me, nothing was worth enduring such hardships, or missing out on all the Christmas Day food and excitement!

(c) Clare Cooper, 2024

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Well, that’s December done and dusted. I do hope you’re enjoyed these Showcases this past month. Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and New Year, however you celebrate it – or not. Me, I’m off to find those chocolates I mentioned in my first Showcase!

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If you’d like to see your writing appear in the Write On! Showcase, please submit your short stories, poetry or novel extracts to: pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/

Hear extracts from Showcase in our podcast. Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo or find us on Spotify for Pocasters.

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