2013 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge
2013 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge
2013 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge
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24 CULTURAL STUDIES I <strong>Jesus</strong> <strong>College</strong> <strong>Annual</strong> <strong>Report</strong> <strong>2013</strong><br />
Pylons<br />
James Purdon<br />
A Research Fellow in English Literature outlines how the first pylons<br />
stimulated the artistic imagination <strong>of</strong> the nation<br />
It was a fellow <strong>of</strong> <strong>Jesus</strong> college, the architect<br />
Sir John Leslie Martin, who wrote in 1937<br />
that:<br />
The new aesthetic exists in the motor-car<br />
and the aeroplane, in the steel bridge and<br />
the line <strong>of</strong> electric pylons. Its values,<br />
precision, economy, exact finish, are not<br />
merely the result <strong>of</strong> technical limitation.<br />
[…] Even the painter and the sculptor […]<br />
have, in non-figurative work, abandoned<br />
the accidental for the exact and have<br />
replaced the ornamental by the<br />
constructional.<br />
Martin’s own preference for construction and<br />
exactness over ornament and accident is plain<br />
enough in the form <strong>of</strong> the buildings he<br />
designed, among them the Royal Festival<br />
Hall and Caius <strong>College</strong>’s Harvey Court. Just<br />
as interesting, however, is his inclusion in<br />
this list <strong>of</strong> aesthetic objects <strong>of</strong> a “line <strong>of</strong><br />
electric pylons”. During the 1930s, many<br />
painters, poets and film-makers were<br />
similarly attracted to these new and bizarre<br />
objects in the British landscape. Pylons<br />
marked, and transgressed, all sorts <strong>of</strong><br />
boundaries. For surrealist painters, they<br />
<strong>of</strong>fered a way to depict bold otherworldly<br />
visions within the rolling landscapes <strong>of</strong> the<br />
home counties. For revolutionary left-wing<br />
poets, they provided a language in which to<br />
talk about power in ways that were both<br />
abstract and concrete. To documentary filmmakers,<br />
they gave a ready-made image <strong>of</strong><br />
modernity.<br />
In Britain the National Grid was a site <strong>of</strong><br />
contested meanings and strange alliances<br />
even before it had been built. Proposed and<br />
begun under Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin,<br />
the project gave rise to the spectacle <strong>of</strong> a<br />
Conservative government pushing for a large<br />
nationalised infrastructure funded by the<br />
Treasury in opposition to the interests<br />
<strong>of</strong> private businesses in the regions.<br />
To compound the irony, the Electricity Supply<br />
Bill was shepherded through Parliament in<br />
1926, the year <strong>of</strong> the General Strike: while<br />
socialism was making its presence<br />
powerfully felt in British cities, a Conservative<br />
government signed into law Britain’s biggest<br />
ever programme <strong>of</strong> modernizing public<br />
works.<br />
Initially borrowed from Greek by French<br />
Egyptologists as a term for the gateway<br />
towers <strong>of</strong> Egyptian temples, the word pylon<br />
(which simply means ‘gate’) had remained in<br />
current use to designate the end tower gates<br />
<strong>of</strong> suspension bridges. More recently, it had<br />
been applied to the steel towers used to mark<br />
the course in the new extreme sport <strong>of</strong> aircraft<br />
racing, as in Pylon, William Faulkner’s 1935<br />
novel about barnstorming pilots.<br />
Tristram Hillier, who studied at Christ’s<br />
<strong>College</strong>, <strong>Cambridge</strong>, was probably the first<br />
English painter to recognise the significance<br />
<strong>of</strong> the pylon. His painting Pylons (1933)<br />
appeared in Paul Nash’s influential Unit<br />
One exhibition in 1934. Hillier’s artist’s<br />
statement, which can be found in the book