Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An art historian and rector of the Royal College of Art, he coined 'spaghetti westerns' and championed popular culture as worthy of serious study.
On the island
Eight records
Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3
Ian was a student at the Royal College of Art in the mid-sixties and before then at Walthamstow where he was a fellow student with my wife, Helen. And the words of this song remind me of wandering round the painting studios at the college where all the students have their sort of pin boards of favourite postcards, Xeroxes, posters, things they like.
The Band of the Royal Scots Greys (conducted by Frederick Frayling)
He was a bandmaster, a professional bandmaster of the regiment, the Royal Scots Greys, and this was recorded in nineteen twelve, selection from an operetta by Franz Leyard called Gypsy Love. This brings back my childhood extraordinarily.
Now, she hasn't got the best voice in the world, but kind of just think of the scene in the film Breakfast at Tiffin is 1961. A young writer is in an apartment in New York on East 71st Street, and he looks out of his window, and just below him, on the fire escape, is sitting this vision of Audrey Hepburn, not in given she for once, but just wearing jeans and a pullover, strumming on a guitar, singing Moon River.
The Threepenny Opera: Mack the Knife
Berlin State Opera Orchestra (conducted by Otto Klemperer)
is the the suite from the Thruppenny Opera by Kurtweil, but it has to be the version of nineteen twenty eight conducted by Otto Klempere, who was there at the very first performance. And this for me, it's twenties Germany, it's jazz meets opera, it's incredibly evocative.
Le Devin du Village: J'ai perdu tout mon bonheur
Anna Maria Miranda with the Orchestre de Chambre (conducted by Roger Cotte)
This relates to when I did research just after leaving, being an undergraduate at Cambridge, I stayed in Cambridge for a few years to be a research student studying the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau... And the very first song called J's Père du Tu Montbonneur, Lost is All My Peace of Mind, still brings all that back to me.
The Face of Tutankhamun (Title Music)
is the title music from a T V series I did in 1992 called The Face of Tutankhamun, and it still sends shivers up and down my spine. It was a great opening to the series and it brings back all the fun of making that programme, indeed all the other programmes that I've done.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Il TrielloFavourite
Ennio Morricone (with Unione Musicisti di Roma)
It's the final sequence from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the Spaghetti Western made in nineteen sixty seven... And if you can imagine, you're in the middle of the dusty Spanish desert. There are three men standing there, staring at each other. In fact, I call this sequence an opera in which the arias aren't sung, they're stared.
City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and Orchestra (conducted by Louis Frémaux)
Now I heard this at the memorial service of a friend of mine... And it completely blew my head off. I don't know. You know, music is so often to do with the frame of mind you're in when you first hear it. And it just washed all over me and it means a lot to me, this piece of music.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:42Give me a list of these "beyond the pale" subjects that you've written about.
Well, we start off with vampires. Uh we move on to uh European Westerns... Popular Egyptian design in relation to Tutankhamun, all that sort of thing. I've always had this crusade, really. to broaden the notion of culture and to relate it to the reality of what what happens in people's lives.
Presenter asks
3:49What can't you do a PhD about?
I think you can do a PhD, but I don't think it's a matter of approach, seriousness, not everything is art... There's nothing intrinsically trivial about any subject matter.
Presenter asks
16:49Do you think this parental deprivation [being sent to boarding school early] did you lasting damage?
Possibly something it certainly made me rather embattled about life, I think, which is which has helped me. It sort of stokes me up. Taking on crusades, trying to go being against the grain sometimes and fighting for causes that are difficult... Me against the world is an attitude which I still have to some extent.
The keepsakes
The book
Miguel de Cervantes
The relationship between Sancho Panza and Don Quixote is for me moving, amusing, and says a lot about me actually. Here's this popular culture man, Sancho Panza, who's rather coarse, he belches, he rides around on his donkey, he uses bad language sometimes, and here's the Don, this chivalric sort of character. And the relationship between the two is just wonderful, and I'd love to have the opportunity to re-read all that.
The luxury
I could sort out the signage system... I could sit on the desert island working out the signage.
Presenter asks
23:39What made you so sure it was the right thing for you [to move from academe to art education at the Royal College of Art]?
It was 1979 and at that stage it was very, very rare for someone to go from mainstream university into into art and design... There's the ivory tower where you study things and there's the place where you make and do things. And the way you make and do things is the tradesman's entrance. And I've spent a long, long time trying to sort of redress that.
Presenter asks
29:51How would you put across important design on mainstream television?
Well, I think one way of doing it would be Solving everyday problems. You'd say, what object really, really irritates you?... That's a good way into design, I think, because it makes it everyday. But it's also a serious question that, you know, some of these things need redesigning, and the redesigns have had an important impact on our society.
“there's a culture with a CHA, you know, which is what connoisseurs do, and there's culture, which is the sort of art you lean against.”
“if there was a terrible holocaust of some sort and I had to choose between saving the sole copy of Wagner's Ring and the sole copy of Singing in the Rain, I wouldn't hesitate. It would be Singing in the Rain.”
“Every light switch, every light bulb, everything you see was designed by someone as a conscious human decision.”
“Simplicity is the most difficult thing of all.”