Looking through a book on Art in the Sixties I saw this again. Not this exact picture, but a version of it. This, culled from online, looks like it might be the original, though. Seems it was created by Warren Chalk as part of the Living City exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in 1963. Every time I come across it I think 'Yes!', so right. Cigarettes, Playboy, whisky, shades and two Jazz albums. It pretty much sums up the birth of the Cool in London. OK, whether Chalk thought he was laying out all that was Cool, I don't know. Pop Art? Definitely. No ordinary Map of Cool would include sweets and a packet of Daz. A design for living. What could be better than sipping a whisky, smoking and listening to Ornette Coleman whilst flicking through the latest Playboy? Eh? The fact that Coleman features instead of, say, the Modern Jazz Quartet or Miles Davis proves Chalk was thinking outside instead of opting for the obvious. It's 'cool' beyond conventional cool into the realms of the avant-garde where those who knew 'got' it.
As much as I love it, I hate it. I'm envious! Pathetic, I know. To be 18 in London in '63....the clothes, music, Art - yeah, yeah, we all know. You could smoke in bars! You could...you could...ah, forget it.
Some kids would envy me being 18 when Punk happened and 15 when Funk was at it's peak. You never know you're living through what will be someone else's dream era. As good as Punk was, unlike the early-60s, it was also about nihilism, destruction, anger, frustration etc. I'd rather have been part of something far more positive, an era when the working classes were breaking into all the arts and employment figures were high.
Just to link the city theme, here's one I made a few years ago.
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| RTomens, 2018 |
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