22: Nothing Holds Back the Night by Delphine De Vigan

Nothing Holds Back the Night by Delphine De Vigan

Bloomsbury, London, August 2013.
Review published in The Townsville Eye, 9 November 2013.

‘What’s she done, what’s she done?’ Delphine De Vigan’s thoughtful exploration of her mother’s extraordinary life and death begins with this question on a Wednesday morning when she finds Lucile dead in her apartment. Lucile was a feted child model in 1950s Paris, third of nine children in a family that was at one time the subject of a television documentary showcasing the ‘perfect family’. Common sense tells us there is no such thing, and De Vigan does not don rose-coloured glasses for her mother’s story. She interviewed Lucile’s surviving brothers and sisters and listened to her grandfather’s taped history to make sense of the family, to discover how they shaped her mother’s life. De Vigan draws out stories of an overbearing patriarch, accidental deaths, acrimonious divorce, painful accusations, terminal cancer, and suicide. Lucile’s adult life was punctuated with delirium, despair and hospitalisation which had its inevitable impacts on Delphine and her sister Manon’s lives. Lucile was a singular woman; elusive, glamorous, a daughter, a sister, a mother. Nothing Holds Back the Night stands as
De Vigan’s tribute to Lucile.

Verdict: Tragic

twenty - banksy by will ellsworth-jones

Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall by Will Ellsworth-Jones
Published 2012
Review available in ArtGaze magazine December 2012

‘I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit.’ – Banksy.

A bit of a misleading book title; what made you think you were going to meet the real Banksy, see what he looks like, read about his childhood? This book is not shelved in the biography section, and yet it is one of the most interesting unauthorised biographies I have read. Arguably the most recognisable name in graffiti, Banksy appears to have grown up rough in Bristol and early on chose the anonymity for which he is known (or not known). It’s an ironic ploy that has worked for and against him ever since.
Ellsworth-Jones asked, ‘how important is Banksy in the whole urban art world?’ and discovered that Banksy ‘kick-started the market. He’s a household name. Everyone’s grandma knows Banksy.’

This book reveals that everyone’s grandma actually knows Banksy’s art. If you disregard the mystery surrounding him; the interviews in shadow, the disguised voice, the loyalty and closed-shop of his team Pest Control, and the fact that nobody’s saying who Banksy really is, what you have left is the art. The pictures on walls; the stencils, the wry social comment – it all works well with an artist not desperate for his fifteen minutes. Without a preconceived perception of the artist as a man, the art can speak for itself. 

I found myself relating to the author while reading. He’s not involved in the art world except for having an artistic appreciation for location-based art. He didn’t meet Banksy, and only owns a knock-off stencil image despite waiting patiently online while others queued overnight. Whatever your knowledge of or interest in Banksy being labelled a street artist, a vandal, a national treasure or a sell-out, you’ll find this the strongest biography of Banksy you’re going to get to read unless his mother writes an exposé of his early years. Does he even have a mother? Yes, there’s a little about her and a revealing incident from Banksy’s pre-teen years, but no happy family photographs. There are few photographs of any of the pieces referred to in the book, but it’s easy enough to go online to find them. Or go on a cross-country trek as the author did using a guide book to find the Banksy image in its natural habitat.

This contextual element of urban art is explored intelligently by the author. Although Banksy graffities on surfaces that he does not own as is the nature of the art, his celebrity drives people to protect his pieces with perspex or have the wall for their own. Meanwhile his contemporaries are fined or jailed and their pieces whitewashed. Contradictory viewpoints are explored with Banksy saying that ‘public reaction is what supplies meaning and value’, and @ashlee arguing that ‘the point of street art is for it to exist in its natural environment. It is by nature temporary.’ Without the urban desolation of its Detroit factory yard environment, does his ‘I remember when all this was trees’ piece have as much impact sitting in a gallery?

Banksy has an uneasy relationship with galleries. After having snuck some detourned paintings into The Tate, he has now exhibited at Bristol’s Gallery and created a high-price market for street art. Banksy squared this with the audience and himself with Pest Control verifications and posting online ‘For the sake of keeping street art where it belongs I’d encourage people not to buy anything by anybody unless it was created for sale in the first place’. When celebrities and millionaires collect Banksy’s ‘for sale’ artwork, both his personal wealth and popularity increase. Banksy may have been feeling a little hypocritical but felt like he had an important message to convey about the absurdity of paying large sums of money for street art taken out of its context. His ‘I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit’ print may have referenced the 25 million pound sale of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, but it is also confronting (or amusing depending on your viewpoint). A commenter on his website noted this piece was the ultimate ‘portion of irony eating itself’. Whether street art should only be accessible to those who can appreciate it in situ, or however Banksy makes his money, I am grateful to him for opening my heart to street art.

Banksy’s site www.banksy.co.uk/index.html

Street art images below by me on instagram

seven: the tattooed flower: a memoir by suzy zail

The Tattooed Flower: A Memoir by Suzy Zail

Scribe Publications, Carlton North, Vic, 2006

review published in VATE Newsletter, no. 4, September 2007

Suzy Zail has managed what many of us wish we had done, but find it is too late. She asked her father about his life. They were like most fathers and daughters¾ too lazy to ask questions, too busy to listen. Emil then found he was dying. Motor Neurone Disease shocked Suzy and her brothers out of their detachment. Suzy knew her father was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia but couldn’t remember its name. She could see the modest flower tattooed on his forearm, but not what lay beneath.

In 1944, thirteen year old Emil Braun, his family, and hundreds of other Czechoslovakian Jews were loaded onto cattle trains for the chilling ride to Birkenau. Emil tells his story. The chapters of his past are interwoven with Zail’s revealing account of her father’s final five years. Zail’s lovingly produced memoir portrays her father as a good man, able to leave his tragic Holocaust childhood behind to thrive as an adult in Australia. The Holocaust had been an aberration¾a dark, bleak time in history. It didn’t define humanity and it wouldn’t define me.

The Tattooed Flower is a compelling personal account of the Holocaust for History students, to be read alongside others published decades ago. An early Birkenau incident provides a revealing anecdote about Dr Josef Mengele. Concentration camp cruelty on a daily level is exposed. Indiscriminate slaughter, miserable provisions, isolation of family members – how did the oppressors think these acts made them the better people? Students of Religion will find that bigotry tainted Emil’s earliest school days. Those studying immigration issues will find that Emil left his childhood behind when he docked at Port Melbourne in 1950. People looked happy, he said. The first Australian he met was a freckle-faced boy raised on beaches and pineapple juice. I’ve found my future. Dave, a sympathetic Australian tattooist, covered Emil’s camp number with a simple floral design.

In the 1960s the Brauns were a family of five and Emil Braun Jewellers the biggest diamond-ring-mount manufacturer in Australia. Emil was founder and chairman of the second largest Jewish social club in Australia, and served as Mayor of the City of Caulfield from 1988. Flower is also a creditable introductory biography of a significant Australian. Although the Australian years are not fleshed out, perhaps because Emil chose to remain silent about his achievements, Zail has the scrapbooks to show what kind of man her father was. You wanted to know who I am, Mr Braun said. I’ve talked for nine nights but I can tell you who I am in less than a minute: I’m a man, loved by a beautiful woman, graced with incredible kids. A lucky man.

An insightful memoir.