But I sat back and looking forward
My shoes were high and I had scored
I'd bolted through a closing door
I would never find myself feeling bored
I've been neglecting the blog of late, certainly neglecting the visual side of things, not being that happy. It's all become a bit wordy. Then lunchtime, for some reason, I suddenly thought of Peter Schlesinger's wonderful book 'Checkered Past: A Visual Diary of the '60s and '70s', published 2003 by Vendome Press. I discovered this book on Ben Pentreath's Inspiration Blog over a decade ago now, and it has been a firm favourite of mine ever since. It is a book of a slightly melancholic beauty. Schlesinger's photographs are ravishing, sometimes possessing an ethereal quality, the result I think of the use of film.
'Checkered Past' documents the American artist's ten years, or so, living in London from the late '60s to the late '70s. When David Hockney returned to Britain in 1968, Schlesinger - then his lover - followed. They settled in the then slightly seedy Notting Hill in w London. In those days those grand stucco houses were subdivided into flats and bedsits. It was a life poised between the bohemian and the Beau Monde. A life that included, amongst a cast of seemingly thousands, such 'Somethingofthechamelon' favourites Cecil Beaton, Patrick Proctor, David Hockney, Min Hogg, Gala Mitchell, and Celia Birtwell; the social, the arts, applied arts and the intellectual. Socialites and plutocrats. A life partially covered in Jack Hazzan's 1973 film 'A Bigger Splash', which purportedly covers the aftermath of the end of Schlesinger's relationship with David Hockney, and the creation of one of Hockney's most well known paintings, 'Portrait of an Artist'.
It is a world that is slowly slipping from our grasp. It essentially ended in the mid-70s after the Oil crises. I think it was Sir Roy Strong, who moved in the same circles, who said that it was the last social great period, or words to that effect. Certainly a more colourful world both in terms of the visual but also the character of those depicted. There was definitely more place for the eccentric and the intellectual.
Checkered Past: A Visual Dairy of the 60s & 70s Peter Schlesinger, Vendome Press, 2003
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