A bit of a Darwin sub-theme for me at the moment – this time a group show of nine contemporary artists responding to Darwin’s work on evolutionary theory and natural selection.
The title refers to the story of an exchange of letters between Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin – and of course, it was Wallace’s work on evolutionary theory that was the catalyst for Darwin’s On the origin of species.
There were a number of absolute gems in this exhibition:
Intelligent Design by Marcus Coates, a film installation of the failed attempts of giant tortoises on the Galapagos Islands to mate;
Tally by Mark Fairnington, a huge picture of a bull reminiscent of the detailed observational drawings that accompanied much nineteenth century empirical science;
Worm by Tania Kovats showing a cross-section of a wormery, the resulting disrupted strata of soil resembling an abstract painting;
Pre-retroscope V by Conrad Shawcross, which is beautifully described in the accompanying guide as a ‘poetically futile’ attempt to capture a moment of experience using a video camera on a 360 degree circuit. The accompanying wall display of found objects resembled a distorted version of the classic illustration of the ascent of man.
On a different level, I left wanting a summerhouse or conservatory in which to house collections of stuff like Ben Jeans Houghton’s On the ark and I.
Downstairs in the gift shop, the strangely apt ‘You don’t have to be a scientist to do experiments’ by Jeffrey Lewis was playing in the background. In a wittier moment, I might have made an elegant link back to Darwin’s position in the nineteenth century ‘gentleman amateur’ tradition of science.
In a recent blog entry, Cambridge classicist, Mary Beard, related her recent confession that despite being the biographer of classicist and pioneer among female academics, Jane Harrison, she (Beard) had never systematically read one of Harrison’s major works. This made me slightly better about one of the lacunae in my own reading. Here goes – despite having written a PhD that encompassed mid-Victorian crises of faith, I have never read Darwin’s On the origin of species cover to cover. I had picked at bits and pieces of it, and read around it, but had always treated it as an artefact and a trigger rather than a text in its own right.
The twin Darwin anniversaries this year seemed to present a good opportunity to rectify this. Do I understand more about Darwin’s thought as a result? Probably not – although I can recommend the Oxford World Classics edition which has a rather good introduction from Gillian Beer. I do now however have a smug sense of completion…
Given that Darwin spent two years studying medicine in Edinburgh, it seemed appropriate to have read this while on a quick shopping trip to the Scottish capital. Worth mentioning that I had a lovely lunch at a vegetarian restaurant, David Bann (where the waiter offered his own opinion on the quality of Darwin’s writing), and I picked up a couple of lovely pairs of Harris Tweed shoes from Ness.
No, nothing to do with Darwin, but deserving of a mention!
I was in London a couple of weekends ago and so took the opportunity to fit in a pilrimage to the Natural History Museum to see Darwin in pride of place in the main hall.
I couldn’t help but noticing some of the associated souvenirs -
Yes, that’s right – the Darwin commemorative lollipop (strawberry flavoured – and very tasty it was too) -
But my prize for the most contrived tie-in to the Darwin anniversaries has to go to Hobbs that has managed to relate a shoe promotion to natural selection and evolution:
Think about the positioning here – Hobbs customers (and I should declare an interest here) are credited with being able to make the intellectual connection to Darwin and are being invited perhaps to connect their own purchase of Hobbs shoes with the survival of the fittest (and before I get flamed, yes I know that phrase originated with Spencer, but it was adopted by Darwin in later publication). It is hard to see this working as part of an advertising campaign for a cut-price supermarket or a teen fashion label.
I have to admire the imaginative leap that this took even if there is a bit of me that just starts to giggle at the stretch! It’s not often a Victorian beardy bloke is invoked to sell women’s shoes. However, if evolutionary theory, however loosely comprehended, is this far embedded in general culture, I can hold on to the naive hope that we will be able to defend the place of evolutionary theory in science and education against the incursion of creationism.
I was in London a couple of weekends ago and so took the opportunity to fit in a pilrimage to the Natural History Museum to see Darwin in pride of place in the main hall.
