Maggi Hambling

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Costaway this week is an artist. She was taught at an early age to take her profession seriously. She makes her work her best friend, getting up early and painting or sculpting until the light has gone. She's a figurative artist and her pictures can be seen among other places in the National Portrait Gallery and in the National Gallery where she was the very first artist in residence 25 years ago.

Presenter0:51

Although she enjoys laughter a lot, her work is often preoccupied with death. She drew her mother, her father, and her lover in their decline and in death, and one of her most celebrated and controversial sculptures is of Oscar Wilde rising from his coffin, smoking and laughing. The most real time for me, she says, is when I'm working. The rest, she adds, in a rather Shakespearean phrase, is just the rest. She is Maggie Hambling. It's an all consuming business, then, this Maggie, is it? But if it's your best friend, your work, your art, then it's no great hardship, I presume.

Maggi Hambling1:27

Well, someone once said to me that uh one's never alone when one's working. And unless the work is one's best friend, I think uh one might as well not do it. It has to be the absolute priority of life.

Presenter1:41

So you can go to it whatever you're feeling. You don't have to be in the mood for work. It is like a best friend. You go when you're miserable or when you're happy.

Maggi Hambling1:48

Whether you're miserable, whether you're bored, whether you're tired, whether you're randy, whatever you're feeling, you can go to your work.

Maggi Hambling1:53

And have a conversation with it. Sometimes I can uh work on a painting for two, three, four months and then have to destroy it.

Maggi Hambling2:01

And that painting can happen in the morning, but it couldn't happen unless I'd uh

Maggi Hambling2:07

Done that piece of rubbish before it can happen.

Presenter2:08

Before

Presenter2:09

And you use the phrase having a conversation. And again, it's one of those phrases you use. Your your sculpture of Oscar Wilde was called a conversation with Oscar Wilde, wasn't it? What d just t tell me about that conversation.

Maggi Hambling2:19

Well it's uh very important uh to me that um my piece for Oscar Wilde is down on our level. I think you know a lot of people think of him as a dilettante not in touch with humanity and he was a great humanitarian and

Maggi Hambling2:36

As it's a portrait of Oscar, I think that uh you enter into a conversation.

Maggi Hambling2:41

with that person, a visual conversation. You know, I mean, there is a a common humanity and uh that confrontation, that conversation is what interests me in great portraits and uh what it is I try to do in my own work.

Speaker 12:44

Yeah, I'm not sure.

Presenter2:51

And

Presenter2:54

We should remind people that it was unveiled, uh your Oscar Wilde, in nineteen ninety eight, I think, just off the corner of Trafalgar Square, and he's in his coffin, as we say, sarcophagus, isn't he? It's sort of polished and marble and and he's rising from it, having fun, really, isn't he?

Maggi Hambling3:03

Yeah.

Maggi Hambling3:08

Yeah, triumph for triumph. I mean his work being the triumph over death, of course.

Presenter3:12

But the thing about it is that people use him, that they sit on

Maggi Hambling3:16

They sit, they have a drink, they have a chat, they have a drink.

Presenter3:17

Sit

Presenter3:18

They eat their sandwiches at lunchtime. Yeah, it's good. It's lovely.

Maggi Hambling3:20

Yes.

Maggi Hambling3:21

A man of the people, a man of the people, yes.

Presenter3:24

But Oscar Wilde is special to you. Oscar Wilde is a kind of thread that's run through your life for some reason. Can you explain that?

Maggi Hambling3:30

Well, his stories for children were read to us at my first school in Hadley in Suffolk, and uh I heard this voice which seemed to come from a from another place. And so uh Picture of Dorian Gray was the first novel I read at the age of twelve. I think it may have had some effect.

Presenter3:49

Okay, record number one.

Presenter3:51

What are you going to take?

Maggi Hambling3:53

Well I'm going to take Michael McLaremore.

Maggi Hambling3:56

The Queen of Ireland Delivering

Maggi Hambling3:59

A little bit of conversation between Lady Bracknell and John Worthing from The Importance of Being Oscar.

Speaker 44:04

I don't know who I am by birth.

Speaker 44:07

I was

Speaker 44:08

Well

Speaker 44:10

I was found. Found.

Speaker 44:14

The late Mr. Thomas Cardew.

Speaker 44:17

An old gentleman of extraordinarily kindly and charitable disposition found me.

Speaker 44:21

Yes, and he gave me the name of Worthing because he happened to have

Speaker 44:25

A first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex, Lady Brecknell. It's a

Speaker 44:33

It's a seaside

Speaker 44:35

Resort And where did the charitable gentleman with the first class ticket for the seaside resort find you?

Speaker 44:42

In a handbag. A handbag.

Speaker 44:46

Yes, yes, Lady Fractal, I was I was in a handbag.

Speaker 44:53

It was a somewhat large, old-fashioned black leather handbag.

Speaker 44:58

with handles to it.

Speaker 45:00

Perfectly ordinary.

Speaker 45:02

Handbag.

Presenter5:04

That was Michael McClearmore in the roles of both Lady Bracknell and Ernest Worthing in a 1964 performance of his one-man show, The Importance of Being Oscar. Of course, Maggie, an equally controversial sculpture of yours, was unveiled a couple of years ago, I think, on the beach at Alborough in memory of Benjamin Britton, and we'll come to that. More controversy. But let's talk about your paintings and the sorts of people you've painted in your time. Max Wall, Stephen Fry, George Melley, AJP Taylor, or people really rather larger than life and a certain raffish quality about them, it has to be said. Do you have to paint people to whom you're whose personalities you're attracted to?

Maggi Hambling5:41

Well, I think I've painted uh uh quite a contrasting lot of people. I can't imagine anyone much more different uh from George Melly than, for instance, Dorothy Hodgkin, the scientist.

Maggi Hambling5:54

you know, life's rich pageant, as Arthur Marshall called it, that's very important to me and the you know, the challenge of painting very different people. There's no plan. I try to get uh

Maggi Hambling6:05

What's inside the person?

Presenter6:07

Yeah.

Maggi Hambling6:08

Into the into into the bronze or into the paint that becomes

Presenter6:10

Or into the paint. But somebody said that you're Stephen Fry, which is hanging in in the National Portrait Gallery, that he has, you know.

Presenter6:18

Two different emotions, I think, one in each eye.

Presenter6:22

That that well, that he has a kind of wit and optimism in one part of him, and then a kind of sense of tragedy in the other. Those are the kinds of characters, it seems to me, that you because they have to inhabit you, you said.

Speaker 46:22

But that

Speaker 16:22

Yeah.

Presenter6:35

In order for you to be able to paint them, you've got to be really interested or to like them. That's my question. Do you have to like them? Do you have to.

Maggi Hambling6:42

Well, I wouldn't take on a commission to paint someone with whom I felt no rapport. And certainly about Stephen Fry.

Maggi Hambling6:50

I found the the the optimism, the wit in the right eye and uh the sense of tragedy and what can happen in life in the left eye people, it's very complicated. I mean that's part of the point, that the you know, the truth of the person I try to empty myself, become a channel for the truth of the person in front of me to come through me onto the canvas or into the middle of the morning.

Presenter7:09

It makes you sound a bit like a medium, that, though, that you need to be inhabited by this person. Let them into you and come through you.

Maggi Hambling7:15

Well, it's more I mean, when uh someone is alive and uh sitting or standing there in front of me, then it's uh more simple, I suppose. But uh if I'm painting someone after they're dead, then it's because I'm inhabited by them and

Maggi Hambling7:28

That's a different matter.

Presenter7:29

We'll come to that different matter, but let's have record number two.

Maggi Hambling7:33

It is George Singing.

Maggi Hambling7:36

Yes it's a sweet song, especially written by John Chilton.

Maggi Hambling7:40

For George and his girlfriend uh Squeaky, I meant Squeaky in the eighties uh making the Arch Quiz Gallery when George was the host and uh I was a rather odd team captain and uh always lost and um

Presenter7:55

He turned out not to know much about the history of artists.

Maggi Hambling7:57

Yeah.

Presenter7:57

Uh

Maggi Hambling7:59

Well, the other team captain was an art hi historian, so what would you expect? But you were the star, I recall. I think I I think possibly something to do with wearing bow ties. I really wouldn't know, sir.

Maggi Hambling8:09

Anyway, ah they became, because of that, three series of that extraordinary business, ten programmes in five days, and a lot of vodka.

Maggi Hambling8:17

They remain two of my greatest friends, it's a sweet, real love song.

Speaker 48:21

I wanna go, where you go?

Speaker 48:25

Do what you do.

Speaker 48:28

Love when you burn and I'll be happy.

Speaker 48:32

You can go mouth or sound

Speaker 48:34

You can go east or west, I'll follow you sweetheart And share your little best I wanna go where you go

Speaker 48:46

What you do love when you love then I'll be happy.

Presenter8:54

George Melly, and then I'll be happy.

Presenter8:57

I have to say, Maggie, at first glance, your your background looks sturdily conventional, doesn't it? You lived in Suffolk in a Georgian house covered in wisteria. Your father was the chief cashier in the local Barclays Bank. Your mother became a schoolteacher. But that kind of isn't quite how it was either, is it? For a start your brother wanted you to be a boy and treated you like one, huh?

Maggi Hambling9:18

Ah, well, I think he guessed when my mother came back with me from uh Sudbury, where I'd been born, to Hadley.

Maggi Hambling9:26

uh as a baby uh he stood there and she had to confess.

Maggi Hambling9:30

That I was.

Maggi Hambling9:31

a girl rather than a boy. But he chose really to ignore that sort of technicality and uh brought me up as a brother. I mean, uh, we did carpentry. I was once given a doll and that was uh carved up pretty quickly in the woodshed and uh it was much more useful for later life really to know a bit about carpentry and uh

Maggi Hambling9:49

ringing chickens' necks, so I was a bit surprised when

Maggi Hambling9:52

And when he had sort of got into his teens he started sort of practising French kissing on me'cause it didn't quite go with the carpentry, but, you know, that's how life is full of surprises, isn't it?

Presenter10:02

He was quite a bit older than you, wasn't he?

Maggi Hambling10:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My sister, um, eleven years older and he nine years older, yes.

Presenter10:08

But you were apparently a difficult, perverse, obstinate, tricky.

Presenter10:15

Yeah.

Maggi Hambling10:15

I read.

Maggi Hambling10:18

Perfectly natural and normal. Though uh my mother did he was uh very obstinate.

Maggi Hambling10:22

And I think there's nothing wrong with a little bit of perversity.

Presenter10:26

But she liked you to be neat and tidy, didn't she? She was quite a conventional woman.

Maggi Hambling10:32

They are conventional.

Maggi Hambling10:34

The theatre was very important to both of them. My father was uh

Maggi Hambling10:37

Rather in the distance when I was a child, my mother was rather more mother and father to me.

Maggi Hambling10:43

But my moments of seeing father in a very marvellous and glamorous light was when he performed in the Hadley Dramatic Society. Wh he was very, very good on the stage.

Maggi Hambling10:55

My mother

Maggi Hambling10:57

had a taste for charades and really wanted home life to be a bit like an Earl card play, you know. She they had completely opposite senses of humour, and at breakfast it was a bit like being with Punched Judy.

Presenter11:09

And your father, you said, was a mysterious person throughout my childhood. What do you mean by mysterious?

Presenter11:15

Yeah.

Maggi Hambling11:15

But he was behind the Daily Telegraph a very gruff person and rather a stranger.

Maggi Hambling11:20

out of the house a lot of the time and uh doing other things and uh

Presenter11:23

He had another life.

Maggi Hambling11:24

He had another life.

Presenter11:26

A different life from the conventional home life.

Maggi Hambling11:29

Yeah, yeah, he had uh

Maggi Hambling11:31

Close male friends?

Maggi Hambling11:33

I became aware in my teens, and it was extraordinary to think of my father.

Maggi Hambling11:39

who had been the very gruff, distant person and also had an extremely feminine side.

Maggi Hambling11:46

And why not?

Presenter11:46

And did you ever talk to him about that in later life?

Maggi Hambling11:49

In later life, yes. And what brought us together?

Maggi Hambling11:52

was when

Maggi Hambling11:53

he began to paint, you know, I'd left Camberwell and uh

Maggi Hambling11:57

He retired from the bank and I gave him some paints and five years later when he was sixty five, quite nothing to do with me, he suddenly decided one morning to take out the paints and he started to paint and uh

Maggi Hambling12:09

He turned out to be a completely natural painter.

Maggi Hambling12:12

Organised, I think, seven shows for him. Did he sell? In Suffolk. Everything. We once showed together. I sold one, he sold a lot.

Presenter12:20

Amazing.

Maggi Hambling12:20

Art, you know, brought us together. If I hadn't loved him as much as I did, I would then think I would have stopped work on my wild sculpture and painted him after he died for about three months.

Maggi Hambling12:34

I was inhabited.

Presenter12:36

Pick one number three.

Maggi Hambling12:38

So my mother was a great church person. She organized uh all the flower festivals and ran the Mothers' Union and that kind of thing. And so this is a bit for her and a bit for a very close friend of mine, who it

Maggi Hambling12:50

always causes to cry.

Maggi Hambling12:53

And I think very few people.

Maggi Hambling12:55

can remain untouched. There shouldn't be a dry eye in the house after this one.

Speaker 413:15

Awesome.

Speaker 413:21

Oh my son is fine.

Speaker 413:26

Give him the spirits.

Speaker 413:33

We did a place.

Presenter13:43

Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, sung by the choir of Saint Paul's Cathedral. The organist and conductor was John Scott. Um so, Maggie Hambling, you thought maybe that acting was going to be your

Presenter13:54

escape route from life as we all do when we're that small, but it turned out to be

Presenter13:59

Art, painting, drawing when did that come into the frame, then?

Maggi Hambling14:03

Well there was an art exam at school when I was fourteen.

Maggi Hambling14:08

And I'd done nothing.

Maggi Hambling14:10

um during the time except flick paint at people and generally draw attention to myself because I was deeply in love with the biology mistress in vigilating.

Maggi Hambling14:19

And then I sort of happened to see the clock, and it was twenty past three, and I realized that at half past three we had to hand some paintings in, so

Maggi Hambling14:26

There were three subjects, and I chose laziness, and I painted a

Maggi Hambling14:30

A woman lying on a chaise long with a book half open. In other words, you know, she was too lazy even to read. Anyway, so I did this painting in ten minutes and then when the results came out uh

Maggi Hambling14:41

Two or three weeks later.

Maggi Hambling14:43

I was top of art and I thought this is a

Maggi Hambling14:45

It's a very strange business. You don't have to try and you're good at it, you know, so I sort of began to look into it.

Presenter14:51

And by amazing coincidence, on the edge of your village, Hadley, was a a very, very good art school called Benton End. I mean, it was very lucky for you. Tell me about it.

Maggi Hambling15:02

Well, it uh it was run by Let Haynes and Cedric Morris.

Maggi Hambling15:06

And so I took my first two Suffolk landscapes, my first two oils, um, one summer evening, and Lett came to the door, he was very frightening, and I said,

Maggi Hambling15:17

Is Sir Cedric Morris at home, please? And he said Cedric Morris is having his dinner like that.

Maggi Hambling15:22

And so I said, May I wait?'Cause I was going to go away, you know? And uh so I went in and there was a long table and Cedric was sitting at the end.

Maggi Hambling15:30

And Sergei was very chatty and and giggly and

Maggi Hambling15:33

Nice and

Maggi Hambling15:34

Then Let's said,'I suppose you'll stood school'? and I said,'Yes.

Maggi Hambling15:37

And he said, Well, perhaps we'd better come along paints in the holidays. So the first day of the holidays I was there, but I was too scared to go up the bit of drive.

Maggi Hambling15:46

And I sat in the ditch outside the gates and painted the ditch until someone eventually came and found me.

Presenter15:53

But they taught you. I mean, they gave you all the grounding that you really were going to need, didn't they? They taught you.

Maggi Hambling15:57

Well, let. I mean, he was the one whose work was uh

Presenter15:58

So

Maggi Hambling16:00

extraordinarily imaginative. He's the person that said to me, Make your work your best friend. Um uh but he had rather given his life to the um you know, to making Cedric's career. But he's an extraordinary artist in his own right.

Maggi Hambling16:15

Record number four.

Maggi Hambling16:17

And so from that to London. So it was London. It was the sixties. I was one of the privileged people to be a an art student in swinging London.

Maggi Hambling16:26

and I had uh arrived in London.

Maggi Hambling16:30

Nearly nineteen.

Maggi Hambling16:32

Believe it or not, as a virgin, um and I sort of thought I'd better do something about this, it was rather embarrassing. I uh I'd made my mother buy a full-length black leather coat, I a lot of makeup, I'd dyed my hair crimson, wore her fox fur round my neck, I in fact looked like the madame of a brothel, and in the first year the other girls came to me for advice on contraception, I really cannot imagine.

Maggi Hambling16:57

what I instructed them to do. However.

Maggi Hambling17:01

I had a sort of list of pretty basic kind of possibilities of uh

Maggi Hambling17:05

who I might go to bed with and uh

Maggi Hambling17:08

So sort of sort of younger man, older man, black man, woman. I worked my way through the list eventually at the end of the first year of Camberwell and

Maggi Hambling17:17

I like the ladies best. So this is Dusty Springfield, and the memory.

Maggi Hambling17:22

Of uh the Gateways Club and the King's Robe and a lot of hot, sweaty dancing.

Speaker 417:28

Left alone with just a memory

Speaker 417:34

Life seems dead, and so unreal

Speaker 417:41

All that's left is loneliness There's nothing left to feel You don't have to say you love me, just because

Speaker 117:53

You don't have to s

Speaker 417:57

Uh

Presenter17:57

Dusty Springfield and you don't have to say you love me. How did your mother, Maggie, react to this change in this baby daughter whom she'd always turned out looking so beautiful?

Maggi Hambling18:08

Ah, she was not not too pleased.

Maggi Hambling18:11

I thought which I thought was a bit greedy of her. I mean, my sister.

Maggi Hambling18:14

Married with uh three sons. My brother married with a son. I mean, she c I think she's being rather greedy.

Maggi Hambling18:21

that uh what sorted her out was being such a church person she went away on a weekend retreat

Maggi Hambling18:28

to a monastery somewhere and uh

Maggi Hambling18:30

She went into the room, or the cell, I suppose, and uh very bravely said, I have one daughter, one

Maggi Hambling18:37

Son but the third.

Maggi Hambling18:39

Daughter is, and she said, ah, that's a rather embarrassing word, I far prefer the word dyke, lesbian.

Maggi Hambling18:46

And

Maggi Hambling18:48

And so the monk was obviously uh

Maggi Hambling18:52

Very civilized person. Then anything else about the monk?

Maggi Hambling18:55

said I do hope you haven't ever held it against her

Maggi Hambling18:59

Let us kneel down and pray that she meets uh people whom she will love, you know? And so that sorted her out.

Presenter19:07

Mum got sorted. Your career took off, meanwhile. You had your first exhibition in the early 70s, I think. Yes. And if we spool on, by nineteen eighty you um aged thirty five

Presenter19:19

You were the National Gallery's first artist in residence. How how did it work for you, that? How how did you interact with the public, or did you hide away and try not to?

Maggi Hambling19:30

Well

Maggi Hambling19:31

My studio was a converted children's sandwich room with no windows, and as I

Maggi Hambling19:38

Smoked in those glorious days

Maggi Hambling19:41

They had entirely encased the inside of the room with tin foil.

Maggi Hambling19:45

So I felt rather like a ready made meal, you know.

Maggi Hambling19:49

Anyway, the notices around the gallery said

Maggi Hambling19:52

Meet a real artist, you know, and sort of like them was a bit of a monkey, you know, inviting people to come along and sort of poke your clothing or something. Anyway, on a Wednesday afternoon,

Maggi Hambling20:01

The public arrived at four o'clock outside my studio.

Maggi Hambling20:06

And I took them down into the collection and around half half a dozen paintings that I loved and which I talked to them about, why I loved them.

Maggi Hambling20:15

And then we came back up to the studio, and inevitably, every Wednesday afternoon

Maggi Hambling20:21

This German lady would ask me if I saw auras.

Maggi Hambling20:25

Every Wednesday it was like a punishment.

Maggi Hambling20:29

Okay, well number five.

Maggi Hambling20:31

Number five: Beethoven String Quartet.

Maggi Hambling20:35

In the early seventies. I um

Maggi Hambling20:37

was opened up by someone who became a muse and

Maggi Hambling20:42

Encourage me to paint people.

Maggi Hambling20:44

Again, having been through a lot of experiments at the Slade,

Maggi Hambling20:48

And being uh

Maggi Hambling20:51

Very keen on very classical music. I think she tried to uh raise the tone of my taste a bit. And she gave me this record. I don't know if it's worked.

Presenter21:59

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's string quartet in C-sharp minor, played by the Hungarian quartet. Um you say that the woman who introduced you to that piece of music opened you up. I suppose the really the strongest example of of a sitter inhabiting the artist in in in your case was personified by um Henrietta Moraes who came into your life in nineteen ninety eight.

Presenter22:20

And you drew her and painted her such a lot, and and did sculptures of her. But there was a larger than life figure, wasn't she? I mean, tell me about her. She's an incredible figure.

Maggi Hambling22:29

Well, uh as I'm sure you know, she was the queen of Soho in the fifties and uh hippie in the sixties. Uh she was painted by Francis Bacon, uh, I think sixteen times.

Presenter22:39

And Freud and

Maggi Hambling22:40

Anne Freud a bit in the early part of it, yes. And uh she was a f I mean a gr very great beauty and a very strong personality and

Presenter22:49

But she'd led a rackety old life, hadn't she?

Maggi Hambling22:52

Well, she'd led a life, you know. Depends on your idea of life. She was a liver, and in the end, it was her liver that got her. But I mean, she lived.

Presenter22:55

She was a

Presenter22:57

Yeah.

Presenter23:01

But it was it was oiled by drink and drugs, huh?

Maggi Hambling23:05

Hmm.

Maggi Hambling23:06

No, it should th in one of her obituaries uh there was the line that uh moderation was unknown to her. Um my father's funeral had been uh on mu on a Monday, the beginning of uh ninety eight, and on Wednesday there was a

Maggi Hambling23:21

a dinner at The Haywood following the opening of a bacon show and uh

Maggi Hambling23:26

as I was going to leave, uh there she was by the door, and she sort of spread out her arms and there was this

Maggi Hambling23:32

great beauty and sort of force of nature.

Maggi Hambling23:35

Saying, When am I coming to dinner? And the funny thing was that at the time she only had one tooth.

Maggi Hambling23:43

Not gonna be much dinner. But anyway, in due course uh she came and uh I was working on the my portraits of father laughing, father flirting, the big heads of my father after he died.

Maggi Hambling23:54

And her

Maggi Hambling23:55

Um

Maggi Hambling23:56

My dog, Percy, began to roger her dog Max, and she looked across the studio and said

Maggi Hambling24:02

Oh, good, they're getting on all right. Great.

Presenter24:05

Yeah.

Presenter24:05

Hmm.

Maggi Hambling24:06

And she

Presenter24:06

Took over your life, really, didn't she? Or she took over you in many ways, hm?

Maggi Hambling24:10

Oh yes. Well, I mean, one was uh yeah, absolutely.

Presenter24:15

But in the end she was on the path to death, wasn't she? As you say, cirrhosis of the liver was there. What happened? Were you with her when she died?

Maggi Hambling24:24

As with a bunch of diagrams.

Maggi Hambling24:26

I was really cross and said, Look, you need the doctor, you're really ill. At least can I telephone your doctor? So I telephoned the doctor.

Maggi Hambling24:36

And

Maggi Hambling24:37

went over to the sink for some reason and then came back. She said, come here, give me a hug and another cigarette.

Maggi Hambling24:42

And she actually died on the

Maggi Hambling24:45

A telephone to a doctor cracking a joke.

Maggi Hambling24:47

A marvellous way to die. A lesson in how to die.

Maggi Hambling24:52

Number six.

Maggi Hambling24:53

Well, this glorious bit of Noel Card.

Maggi Hambling24:57

Takes me back to.

Maggi Hambling24:59

Henrietta in every way,'cause there are a great many possibilities of what to fall in love with in this record, and Henrietta, I think, had and did most of'em.

Speaker 425:10

We are told that every hormone does it.

Speaker 425:14

Victor Borger all alone does it? Let's do it. Let's fall in love.

Speaker 425:21

Each tiny clam you consume does it.

Speaker 425:25

Even liberal chi, we assume, does it want to transform it?

Presenter25:37

Noel Cowarden, let's do it. That was recorded live in Las Vegas in 1955. Yeah, that's a bit more kind of outre than we normally hear, isn't it?

Maggi Hambling25:45

Good.

Presenter25:46

Yeah.

Presenter25:47

So you drew Henrietta in death m many, many times you'd d drawn her as she was dying, and other people, your mother and your father and a neighbor. Um I mean you're painting My Mother Dead, it was bought by the British Museum, I think, wasn't it? There's a there's a certain joke, isn't there, that you're going to go down in history as Maggie Coffin Hambling.

Maggi Hambling26:06

That's one of George's uh uh witty remarks, yeah.

Presenter26:09

But it it does sound macabre, or at least unnatural to to

Maggi Hambling26:14

But i for for an artist it it seems to me the I mean the most natural thing in the world. I mean with my mother, um She was very bad at posing when she was alive. She would arrange her hair and she would we'd start to do a drawing and she'd have her spectacles on and she'd take them off and then she'd say, Have you finished? after about three minutes. So l you know, when I drew my mother in her coffin, I did sort of say to myself, Gotcha now, mother, not going anywhere now What can you capture i in death that you possibly can? I mean my mother was quite ill towards the end of her life and

Presenter26:40

It's a strange beauty.

Maggi Hambling26:44

all that sort of pain had gone from the face and uh

Maggi Hambling26:47

Just smiling, I mean, almost smiling. I mean, still very much there if you are very close to someone and I mean, they happen to have died, but I mean, they're going to go on inside you. I mean, that's something to do with love, isn't it? That I mean, they go on inside you.

Presenter26:59

Inside you.

Maggi Hambling27:00

Yeah.

Presenter27:00

Uh

Maggi Hambling27:00

Yeah.

Presenter27:00

But you but you charted as well.

Maggi Hambling27:00

A cube.

Presenter27:03

The paths to death on several occasions. I mean, certainly with your father, you you you drew and painted him much more, didn't you, in the last few months of his life?

Maggi Hambling27:08

Pitched in m

Maggi Hambling27:10

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter27:11

I mean, what is it you're after in those moments?

Maggi Hambling27:14

But you don't want to leave someone, do you? I mean, if they're they are if you can clearly see that they're in the process, if you like, of leaving you.

Maggi Hambling27:23

So it it's it's the emotion of it all that you're after. You say emotion, Sue, I say fact. There's no getting away from it.

Maggi Hambling27:32

Is there it's the one thing that we can't deny?

Maggi Hambling27:36

It's the biggest mystery. I mean, the greatest works of art uh for m have that quality.

Maggi Hambling27:42

You know, you in a great work of art I think you know what it is to be alive and you also

Maggi Hambling27:47

get a bit of sense of what it is to die.

Maggi Hambling27:50

I mean

Maggi Hambling27:53

I think it's really good Mexico, you know, sort of death as a friend and just the other half of life, the other side of the coin. We you know, we sho we sort of shove it all underground, shove it away here, pretend it doesn't happen.

Maggi Hambling28:04

And it does.

Maggi Hambling28:06

Breakfast number seven.

Maggi Hambling28:09

Record number seven.

Maggi Hambling28:11

Benjamin Britton.

Maggi Hambling28:13

My friend Keith Milo played the War Requiem quite a lot in our flat in Greenwich in the sixties.

Maggi Hambling28:20

And I shall never forget the sort of electricity that went through me the first time I heard his music. And I think it's uh what happens if you're in the presence of genius.

Presenter29:31

Lacrymosa Dies Illa, on this day full of tears, from Benjamin Britton's War Requiem, sung by Galina Vishnevskaya, with the Bach Choir and London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer, Benjamin Britton.

Presenter29:45

whose sculpted memorial um you unveiled a couple of years ago at Alborough, Scallop, is it called or a shell shape, um which on the beach at Alborough, it created shell shock, frankly, in his home town, didn't it? They rose up well, they got into an old tears about it.

Maggi Hambling30:01

I guess some of them still are.

Maggi Hambling30:03

Rather surprisingly, I thought I you know, being a bit slow, I.

Maggi Hambling30:08

I really thought that, um

Maggi Hambling30:10

The people of Alborough would be uh grateful to me for making this contemporary um celebration of uh you know their greatest son, for goodness sake.

Maggi Hambling30:19

and it came very sort of simply from the simple idea of when you're a child you hold a shell to your ear and you can hear the sounds of the sea.

Maggi Hambling30:27

And that's how it began, and then, you know, a lot of scallop shells, and scallop being the symbol of the sea, and a pilgrimage, and uh the cradle of Venus, it's got a great many things going for it.

Presenter30:38

And how is it going down now? It's still sitting there on the beach. Are they liking it any better, do we know?

Maggi Hambling30:42

Well, some do, some don't, Sue.

Presenter30:44

But they sit on it.

Maggi Hambling30:45

They do, they do, they sit on it.

Presenter30:47

This is on Oscar.

Maggi Hambling30:48

They sit on it, lovers make love underneath it, um children climb all over it, it's user-friendly.

Presenter30:56

Okay, last question.

Maggi Hambling30:57

Hello.

Presenter30:57

We talked a lot about death, Maggie, um and yours has to come at some time, by the sea perhaps, on a desert island perhaps, but you you know, you are so close to it in the sense that you have seen so many, you have recorded so many, you've recorded people in death. Does it make what you were saying just now about it just being the other side of the coin? Do you feel that cavalier about your own death?

Maggi Hambling31:21

Not at all.

Presenter31:22

Huh.

Maggi Hambling31:22

They are

Maggi Hambling31:26

Whichever saint it was who said, Make me good, but not yet.

Maggi Hambling31:31

No no, I mean, not yet, not yet. I mean, the where this is where we're we're so lucky as uh painters, poets, writers, I mean, so lucky we

Maggi Hambling31:39

You know, we don't retire. We're not we don't have to stop.

Maggi Hambling31:42

you know, we go on and on and on, we hope, until

Maggi Hambling31:45

dying with a brush or something in our hand.

Presenter31:48

But d do we approach it without fear because we're so familiar with it?

Maggi Hambling31:51

Because we're so familiar with it.

Maggi Hambling31:55

I'm not, sir.

Maggi Hambling31:57

philosophical about it. I I I'm afraid of it.

Maggi Hambling32:02

We don't know where we're going, do we?

Maggi Hambling32:06

That's record.

Maggi Hambling32:08

My favourite film by A Million Miles is Sun Like it Hot.

Maggi Hambling32:12

And I've chosen this record as I think it's for me it's one of Marilyn Munro's greatest manifestations, she.

Maggi Hambling32:22

Whiggles up the railway carriage carrying the band to the millionaire's resort.

Maggi Hambling32:27

I did you know that she had one?

Maggi Hambling32:29

Uh heel of one shoe always higher than the other to increase.

Maggi Hambling32:34

The wobble. I mean, not very good for the bat, very good for the bank balance, I think not so good for the bat. But I mean, what a sexy image that is,'cause she was really curly then. And she comes up that aisle singing. Gun and wire

Speaker 432:46

Lost control, running wild, mighty bowl Feeling gay, reckless too Can't remind all the time, never blue Always going, don't know where Always showing, I don't care

Speaker 433:04

Don't love nobody, it's not worthwhile all alone.

Presenter33:16

Hello, Memorial, all too briefly singing Running Wild from the original soundtrack of Some Like It Hot, and that was released in nineteen fifty nine. Now here's the question you've been dreading, Maggie, the one you can't answer. Which one of the eight would you take if you could only take one?

Maggi Hambling33:29

Well, you have some awfully good uh technicians here. Could they sort of splice?

Presenter33:33

No, no, we want to know the answer.

Maggi Hambling33:33

Marriage.

Maggi Hambling33:35

Splice Marilyn into the late Beethoven Quartet. Don't you think that'd be good and original number?

Maggi Hambling33:42

What about your book?

Maggi Hambling33:43

Yeah.

Presenter33:43

You get the Bible, you get Shakespeare.

Maggi Hambling33:47

The Complete Works of Just William by Richmond Crompton.

Maggi Hambling33:50

I always identified with William, and when the deepest moments of uh

Maggi Hambling33:55

Doom and gloom

Maggi Hambling33:57

I can take out a just William Book and they still make me laugh and he somehow finds a way. Whatever is against him, William gets there in the end.

Maggi Hambling34:06

Hear it.

Maggi Hambling34:07

And your luxury.

Maggi Hambling34:08

IS

Maggi Hambling34:10

Am I luxury?

Maggi Hambling34:12

is the wine cellars of All Souls, Oxford, which are

Maggi Hambling34:17

Some people don't know this, but in the wine cellars of also at Oxford, uh

Maggi Hambling34:21

There's a long-legged blonde bunny girl serving the drinks. I wouldn't be quite on my own on a desert island.

Presenter34:28

Don't tell me about her. We'll stick with the claret. Maggie Hambling, thank you very much indeed for letting us see your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 134:41

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.