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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

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