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Fletcher Moss Art Gallery, Didsbury Parsonage, on 8th February 2013.
Photos: © Daniel Cadden 2013
The Lieverdje (pronounced Lee-vert-cheh) and meaning “the beloved little one” or ‘the darling boy’ is a statue of a small boy located on a street called Het Spui (pronounced, ‘Spow) in Amsterdam. The boy is from Amsterdam folk legend, a 19th century street boy who died while saving a cat from drowning in an Amsterdam canal.
Happenings are ‘improvised events’ executed by gifted and inspired eccentrics. They are wacky! I was much impressed by Robert Jasper Grootveld, an artist from Amsterdam, who staged happenings on Spui Square in 1960s. I felt there was much to learn 40 years on!
Each happening depends on the audience to complete it by means of its own performance and understanding of what is going on, regardless of any ‘planning.’ A Happening is always a catalyst. It is both theatre, dance, poetry, music, painting, using everyday objects and activities in ridiculous situations and incongruous locations, to erode the boundary between life and art. This strategy serves to destroy the traditional passive role of the audience, creating what amounts to a revolutionary new situation, given the right circumstances.
The Happening is a totally open form with unlimited possibilities for exploitation, and in Amsterdam, the passionately adored ‘Magic Centre’ of the Dutch avant-garde, was put to an extraordinary use by the gifted master: Robert Jasper Grootveld, who was a genius of the absurd.
Grootveld was born July 19, 1932 in Amsterdam. His father was an anarchist. Grootveld was a school drop out, and did odd-jobs (window cleaner, seaman, copywriter) before becoming a full-time ‘happener’.
When he worked as a window cleaner on the Leideseplein, a public square lined by cafes in the centre of Amsterdam, he spent a week living on a life raft afloat in the Amsterdam canals, cooking over a camp stove and wearing a different suit every day. The stunt was picked up by the local press, and he knew from that day the power of publicity.
He then bought a ‘bakfiets’ which is Dutch word for a bicycle
with a trailer (two wheels at the back one at the front), on which he painted ‘Amsterdam-Paris’. Friends urged him to peddle the contraption to Paris, which he did, joining the Paris cabaret scene as a transvestite performer, he then peddled back to Amsterdam.
Grootveld then went to Africa as a seaman. Here he was impressed by African tribal ritual, (perhaps the Dogons, pictured right) shamanism and Native American peace pipes, etc. He began to see that smokers are like sacrificial victims, and are like the addicted consumers of society. It was while at sea he received his ‘magical shaman’s box’ from an American couple, a doctor and his wife. It is effectively an assortment of cleaning bottles, tins and medicines. (I personally took a photo of it when I finally got to meet Robert Jasper in 2006. It was in his apartment in the Sint Jacob Hospital. Robert Jasper died three years later in 2009).
Resenting his own addiction to nicotine, he resolved to be a one-man anti-smoking movement – a “charlatan, a simple and inadequate exhibitionist”, whose goal would be to outlaw cigarette advertising in the Netherlands. He considered himself a fanatical social worker. He derided the obsessive need to buy television sets, washing machines, electric egg beaters…and began putting graffiti on cigarette ads around the city, and coughing his way into tobacconists with a rag coated with chloroform, provoking customers.
Then he started his own anti-smoke temple in a shed behind the Prinsengracht (and leased by the millionaire magus Nikolaas Kroese who owned the 5 Flies restaurant), where he led his collaborators, primarily artists and local teenagers, in ritual performances against tobacco and smoking.
Vast quantities of smoke were produced to exorcise evil spirits, with Grootveld leaping around the fires in ceremonial dress, his face painted. He ended his sermons with the anti-smoking song: “Ugge-ugge”.
His rituals were becoming increasingly frenzied, and on April 18th, 1964, he burned down the shed, the anti-smoke temple (which he called now the Church for 
Aware Nicotine Addicts), much to the consternation of Kroese and the authorities.
As he set the place on fire he shouted insanely: “Remember Van Der Lubbe!” (a reference to the Dutch man accused of burning the German Reichstag in 1933, an incident that consolidated Nazi power). Eventually in court he pleaded that it was a case of “a ritual that got out of hand.” For this performance he was place on probation.
“He used word play too. The “Marihu” project, ‘marihu’ being short for marijuana: ‘Marie what?’ Marie where? Marihu! Watch out for the Mariheer (the Marihuana Master).’ He instructed everyone to make packages of marihu…marivoodoo, maritaboo, mariyogurt, marihuwelijk (a pun on Dutch word for wedding, ‘huwelijk’). Grootveld claimed everything was marihu and marihu was everywhere. It was a game he called ‘Marihuette (after Russian roulette). The rules for the game went out in a chain letter that requested that people copy five times and circulate among friends. This gave followers the freedom of improving or adding to the rules as they learned the game. Although many played this game, no one understood the rules. It had a point system: a marijuana arrest was 100 points; a voluntary visit to the police station was 150 points. The game grew hopelessly elaborate when players began informing police of their actions as part of the points system. This exposed the hypocrisies as they saw it of police attitude to marijuana (and eventually led to its legalisation in Amsterdam because the police could simply not deal with this situation).
In Grootveld’s view, the none-sense manifested in the game of marihuette mimicked an absurdity he observed in real life. Addicted potheads were being arrested by nicotine-addicted policemen, and the incidents were being reported by alcoholic journalists and read in press or viewed on TV by public addicted to cigarettes and consumerism.
Grootveld was becoming a well-known figure and Amsterdammers have a taste for both humour and political adventure.
HET LIEVERDJE (the darling boy)
The bronze statue of the Darling Boy was a gift to the City of Amsterdam by the Hunter Tobacco Company. Grootveld immediately felt anger towards the donor of the statue, since for him it characterised ‘the addicted consumer of the future’ and a dishonour to the memory of the darling boy who saved the drowning cat at the expense of his own life. He protested its presence and organised happenings every Saturday at midnight, giving speeches that ended with a burnt offering. The police interfered but Grootveld kept on. 
Dozens of teenagers and students began showing up, chanting ‘Image, Imaga’ (French for ‘image or idol’ (ee-ma-jeh) and shouting some of Grootveld’s slogans, including the coughing chant: ‘Ugge, Ugge’ Grootveld would conduct a solemn sermon against smoking: ‘Friends, we are gathered here in this earliest hour on Sunday…’
“The ritual happenings started in June 1964, and
continued until September 1965. He continued to lay blame for Western Culture’s addictive
tendencies at the feet of the tobacco industry (dope syndicate), the liquour industry, the media and all media advertising, and the nauseating middle class (het misselijk makende middenstand). He predicted a future where the press would become so corrupt and bland that illegal newspapers would spring up everywhere. He envisioned a special mission for the city of Amsterdam, describing the extraordinary effects of the encircling pattern of the canals had on him. He predicted, quite prophetically, that a mass influx of young people, particularly from America, would arrive in Amsterdam soon, and that the ‘publicity’, the image, of the city would prove an irresistable magnet.”
References:
PROVO: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt by Richard Kempton
Het Witte Gevaar by Roel van Duyn
Magier: van een nieuwe tijd (het leven van Robert Jasper Grootveld by Eric Duivenvoorden.
SIIG (Dutch Institute of Social History www.IISG.nl)
‘Resurrection’s Children: Exploring the Way Towards God’,
A.M. Allchin was very enthusiastic about Wales and the Celtic Christian Tradition. He helped bring Traherne to greater prominence. He helped restore the shrine to Saint Melangell, at Pennant Melangell near Llangynog. In ‘Resurrection’s Children: Exploring the Way Towards God’ (Paperback – Cantebury Press, 1 Nov 1998), writes about Ann Griffiths; a hymn writer from Llanfihangel near Bala lake:
“She was a genius and a poet, in fact one of only two great women poets to have been acknowledged in the history of Welsh Literature. She also had great intellectual and spiritual gifts, you might call her a natural mystic. In fact, at a human level she was nearly always in company with others, and part of a united family. From her earliest days she had a leading role among women of her part of Wales. And in her youth was a leader in all kinds of exploits and the organiser of parties and evenings of dancing…”
‘Though it crosses human nature,
this perplexing path I trace,
I will travel on it calmly,
while I see your precious face;
take the cross as crown and gladly,
through oppression and dismay,
seek the city of fulfillment,
by the straight, though troubled
Way.
Way so ancient never ageing,
Way whose name is Wonderful;
ever new, without beginning,
Way which saves each dying soul;
Way my spouse and Way my sovereign,
winsome Way, as travellers tell;
Way of holiness, I travel to my rest beyond the veil.
Way the kite, so keen-eyed, misses,
though it shines with midday light,
light, invisible, untrodden,
only faith perceives the sight,
Way that justifies the godless,
where the dead have life restored;
Way of righteousness for sinners,
peace and favour with the Lord.
Way set up before creation,
then revealed to meet our need,
by the promise made in Eden
which announced the woman’s seed;
here the covenant is founded,
here the three in one’s design,
here eternal wine to cheer us,
cheer us human and divine.
O eternal rest and rapture,
when I labour here no more,
found within that sea of wonders,
where one never sees a shore;
coming in to life abundant,
where the Three in One is mine;
boundless sea to swim for ever;
One the human and divine.”
In the chapter ‘Cheerfully Towards Jerusalem’, A.M. Allchin reminds us that the tune most Welshmen sing at Rugby matches is ‘Rhondda Valley’, written by Williams Pantycelyn. ‘Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, / Pilgrim through this barren land:’
He adds, “Pantycelyn says: ‘It is not our works that is the work of redemption, but the works of Jesus Christ”: The believer is called out of herself or himself into the very life of God, by the ever-growing vision of the love of God overwhelming us with its power of attraction.’
‘Hark, the voice of my beloved,
Lo he comes to greatest need,
Leaping on the lofty mountains,
Skipping over hills with speed,
To deliver
Me, unworthy, from all woe…’
…’In thy gracious face there’s beauty
Far surpassing everything,
Found in all the earth’s great wonders
Mortal eye hath ever seen
Rose of Sharon,
Thou thyself art heaven’s delight.”
–from Eifion Evans, Pursued by God (1996)
“If here and now the beauty of your face
Causes myriads to love you,
What will your glad beauty do
There in the expanses of eternity?
The heaven of heavens
Will marvel at you ceaselessly forever.
What height will my love reach then,
What wonder will be mine,
When shall I see your glory
Perfect and full on Mount Sion?
Infinity
Of all beauties gathered into one.”
What thoughts above understanding
Shall find there within myself,
When I see that the Godhead
Perfect and pure, and I are one?
There is a bond
Which there is no language able to express.”
—Llyfr Emynau a Thonau, 1929.
The Harvest of understanding and good will.
Waldo Williams, lived against the grain of his times. A.M. Allchin likens Waldo’s poems to Greek Icons “of the Saints, which link people in this life with people in the world to come”. He goes on to explain that: “They give us a picture of the person concerned as seen in the light of Eternity, in the light of God’s purposes for them. This is not a detailed, chatty representation of the person. It concentrates on the person’s relationship with God.” He describes Waldo Williams as having a total lack of convention, and an almost childlike sense of the ridiculous in life. “At the same time people saw in him a painful quality of compassion, a readiness to bear the pain of other people. These things combined to make him a man of a very special character.”
‘Do you reckon yourself one of the fools for Christ?’
‘You don’t find their race walking this earth anymore. But I should like to think of myself as one of their descendants.’
Waldo Williams
“Waldo Williams was not only a natural mystic, in the sense that he saw directly into the eternal world and glimpsed its oneness; he was also a natural mystic in the particular sense that he saw and experienced this eternal oneness in the world of nature and in the world of everyday. He had, for instance, a profound conviction of the importance of dawn-the point where night meets day–as the moment in which the eternal world draws near to the world of time. In this long ode in praise of St David, he sees the dawn of each day as the moment of Jesus’ Resurrection, the moment when life breaks out of the tomb. The morning star announces Christ’s rising, the sun itself brings it to us:”
“The morning star that has such lovely power
is the angel of his great gospel,
the sun which breaks out from the fetters of the east.
Through these, everyday, God gives his youth,
kneel for his sake when he fills the dawn.”
‘Angharad’, from The Leaves of the Tree:
My brother, to me faultless,
His blessing was gentleness,
Llwyd, good night! Oh how meek,
How rich, how modest he was!
And the sap of the vine still
Flowed in him, a sure goodwill.
Open and mild among us, unlost
He carried home the harvest.
Shepherd, with his honest face,
In Rhydaman a long space
(Good steward) tried to see sense,
Bring hearts into God’s presence,
The unfailing fullness, God’s
husbandry of neighbourhood.
“Waldo celebrates his friend, above all…a shepherd of Christ’s people, a steward of the mysteries of God….the shepherd has been one who, by his attentiveness to all, has helped people to be open and attentive to one another….our society has so much ‘physical violence, verbal violence, economic violence, structural and institutional violence, spiritual violence…intensified by its being vividly represented in the media so that violence often dominates imaginations…David Ford stresses the irreplaceable value of gentleness in building up the life of our society.”
“Gentleness seeks to bring about that personal recognition and understanding between people…’seeking to see sense.’ It is seeking to understand one another and thus to bring the whole congregation into the harvesting of God.”
“My cry of loss on flecked floor,
Llwyd, hid bard of Allt Cilau-fawr.
On phantoms light has broken,
Its genius has left the sun.
And from his home and threshold
The dear man left Wythcae’s world-
Gave up walking the hill brim
For two yards in Rhydwilym
Oh, where’s vision, free created
A great wound is a poet’s death.
Raise our race, keep our folk hoard,
Lift your burden on us, Lord,
And for the three dear ones, turn
Mist at the ford to sunshine.”
“The mist is contrasted with the Light of God, a glimpse of the sun which breaks through the murk and the darkness bringing warmth and illumination….we find light through our darkness, light in our darkness:
Let me greet you, good soul, Glinted
Light breaks through the vale of dread.
I keep your balm for always,
Preaching, that tips summer days
To sing forever. ‘Blessed
Are the meek.’ A glitter, a glad
Preaching a nightingale’s tune-
The grove of night’s full heaven.
Your music is there. Shine, and
Spread its gift over the land.”
“May God’s light shine out, may the gift of his grace spread over the land…God’s love flowers through us when we are alive…the death-defying quality of art celebrates victory over death of the community of saints in Christ.”
Ann Griffiths says:
“I shall walk slowly all my days under the shadow of the cross, and as I walk I shall run, and as I run I shall stand still and see the peace which will be mine when I come to rest beyond the grave.’
Photos © Harry Matthews 2017
“Waldo, was a natural contemplative, one who loved to stand still and gaze into the things of eternity….Christian life is a journey-a journey through this world of space and time, but also a journey from this world into the great world which lasts forever…inwardly our lives travel far, in which the inner and outer, personal and public themes are linked together, for they were lives which, even if they wre lived on a small stage, were nonetheless lived under a public gaze. Though their daily offerings of their lives to God, both Angharad and Llwyd had arrived at a certain wholeness and maturity. This is the wholeness or integration which comes about when people are willing to bring together within themselves different aspects of human experience, and thus are able to become for the world in which they live people who in small and outwardly insignificant ways, can promote peace and reconciliation. So their lives can show us, even in this world, some corner of the light and gentleness of the world to come” –AM Allchin, ‘The Harvest of Maturity’ in Resurrection’s Children, 1998, Cantebury Press.
Jonathan DARWIN [radio presenter]: Chorlton FM
… we move on now to the world of art. …welcome to our next guest Harry. Good Morning…
Harry [H]: ‘Good morning Jonathan’.
Jonahtan Darwin [JD]: ‘And how are you this morning? …You’re exhibiting a painting part of the festival this year. First of all can you tell us something about yourself, and your art?
H: I enjoy being creative and sharing my creativity with others. The painting I am showing is about personal resurrection and renewal.
JD: There are lots of bright colours in there and its very nice
H:…and there are some interesting cartoons in the composition, and the light is casting away those rather grim and gruesome aspects
JD: The painting itself is really saying then…
H: …Light shines in the darkness.
JD: So tell us about your paints apart from the one’s that you’ve put in this festival…
H: Er, I’ve done quite a few watercolours, I also do some oil paintings.
JD: And I get the impression you really enjoy painting and get a lot out of it.
H: Oh yes! It’s very uplifting.
JD: …And if people want to find out more of how you paint, or who you are and your background, how would they go about that?
H: you can see the painting in the festival hub.
JD: It is a very creative thing you do, and the impression is that you do that and really do enjoy. And that’s very important when you’re painting, as you need to have a passion for something…
H: Yes, its a passion.
JD: And that does shine through in the painting…and I see the copy [A4 sheet] of the painting here in front of me here, which you have brought with you, and like I say it is very vibrant with a good mixture of colours, I do suggest come along to see it. And it really does stand out, which is really is a good thing!
…anymore work to be exhibited?
H: Yes within the next year.
JD: So you’ve got plenty to be working on, lots of experience there and the story behind your paintings. And if people want to find out more, obviously they can pop down and see the painting. It’s been nice talking to you…
‘All things were pure and glorious…I knew not that there were any sins, or complaints or laws. I dreamed not of povertie, contentions or vices. All tears and quarrels were hidden from mine eyes. Every thing was at rest, free and immortal.’
‘I was entertained like an angel with the works of God in their splendour and glory. I saw all the peace of Eden. Heaven and Earth did sing…’
Thomas Traherne, The Centuries of Meditations, III.2
“Thomas Traherne once asked: ‘Is it not strange, that an infant should be heir to the whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold’. And yet Traherne did not doubt this was in fact. Traherne never forgot what he himself had seen as a child:
‘The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor ever was sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting…Eternity was manifest in the light of day, and some thing infinite behind every thing appeared, which talked with my expectation and moved my desire.’
” The Centuries of Meditations, III.3
From ‘Landscapes of Glory’ edited by the late A.M.Allchin
“Cecil Collins says that there is no meaning in life or art ‘excepting that which springs from the immortal surreality of that Eternal Person’. The artist and the poet must embody ‘the eternal virginity of spirit, which in the dark winter of the world, continually proclaims the existence of a new life, gives faithful promise of the spring of an invisible Kingdom, and the coming of light’. Art seen in this way, is a channel of grace providing a link between the visible and invisible realities.” —Peter Fuller, Modern Painters magazine, Vol 2, no 2, 1989
“How dull life would be if we did not
accept anything we could not explain!”
So wrote one of the pioneers of ecological forestry and Earth healing, Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889-1982), in his foreword to Dorothy Maclean’s ‘Call of the Trees’.
“For my part, I would rather be a believer than an unbeliever. It would be conceited to be otherwise, when there is the miracle of sunrise and sunset in the Sahara, the miracle of growth from the tiny germinating seed to the forest giant. Let us accept that miracle of growth as fact and as a living symbol of the Tree of Humanity and the Oneness of Mankind and all living things.”
I will never forget the Rhododendrons in the Himalayas at Shimla in the early monsoon hours; the morning mists, the appearance of a baronial mansion at the top of the hill. The tenacious grounds of Lord Dufferin’s Viceregal Lodge.
Similar in atmosphere to the estate lodge, near Loch, in the Highlands; another pleasant garden of Rhododendrons.
Last summer in Dorset there is Clouds Hill,
a woodsman’s cottage, refitted by spartan
T.E. Lawrence
A forest of Rhododendrons:
“There are also oak trees, an ilex, birch, firs, laurels and heather. The Rhododendrons are profuse and wild in the hollow of the heath.”
(a change from benevolent palm)
“I had dropped one form and not taken the other, and was become like Mohammed’s coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do. Such detachment came at times to a man exhausted by prolonged physical effort and isolation. His body plodded on mechanically, critically on him, wondering what that futile lumber did and why. Sometimes these selves would converse in the void; and then madness was very near, as I believe it would be near the man who could see things thorough the veils at once of two customs, two educations, two environments.” –T.E.Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926).
Above the lintel there is a Greek inscription:
Ou Phrontis
or Hippoclides doesn’t care
“The words, carved in Greek characters, are normally transcribed Ou Phrontis. They come from Herodotus, VI, 129. In a letter to Celandine Kennington of 18.10.1932 Lawrence explained: “In Athens was a gentleman called Hippoclides who became engaged to a rich merchant’s daughter: and they arranged him a slap-up and splendid marriage. The feast preceding it was too much for his poor head, though. He stood on his head on the table and did a leg-dance, which was objectionable in Greek dress. ‘Hippocleides, Hippocleides’ protested the shocked merchant ‘You dance your marriage off.’ ‘Wyworri?’ said Hippocleides: and Herodotus tells the tale so beautifully that I put the jape [‘Why worry’] on the architrave. It means that nothing in Clouds Hill is to be a care upon its inhabitant.”
| D. Garnett (ed.), Letters of T. E. Lawrence (London, Jonathan Cape, 1938 |
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