Lionel Wendt in Popular Limerick

Lionel Wendt photographed by  W.J.G Beling probably during the 1930s  in Colombo, Ceylon
(writer's private collection. All Rights Reserved)

My 93 year old grand-aunt, [Kathleen Deutrom], is a wealth of information and a walking encyclopedia in her own right. In the middle of a conversation she might suddenly break off into a  poem or verse which she remembers from her youth. Yesterday she provided me with a little gem of a limerick on Lionel Wendt (1900 - 1944), Sri Lanka's art connoisseur par excellence during the early 20th century. According to Aunty Kathleen this appeared in the papers a long time ago. My guess is that it was perhaps published during Wendt's lifetime as its tongue in cheek lyrics seem to suggest. I am not sure how the original was spelled so have taken the added liberty of writing it the way I think it may have been originally written. 

Lionel went to the cinema to witness Citizen Kane

Lionel went not only once he also went again

Lionel went on business and not on pleasure bent

I'm sure the new Olympia is glad that Lionel Wendt

Discovering Tom Wesselman and American Pop Art

(taken from the website http://www.catsegovia.org/2011/01/still-life-30-by-tom-wesselmann.html)

Today in my tutorial class for Andy Warhol's America I was the only person who put my hand up to the question "who likes this painting" (oops). The topic for today's class was Consumerism's Aesthetic: Pop Art. Wesselman's Still Life #30 of 1963 was one of the images up for debate (along with many other works of art such as Warhol's "Brillo boxes" and James Rosenquist's "I love you with my ford").

The lecturer wanted to know why I liked it and the class laughed when I said "in my imaginary house this is what I would hang on my wall" .... and then I muttered "with other posters" (wouldn't dedicate an entire wall to it but it would be in my collection of pop art posters in that house on the hill or by the beach that I will one day build - which will not happen in reality but that's why it's called a "dream house"). So why did I like this painting that nobody else really liked. It represented to me (and many others in the class as well) not just the consumer driven america of the 1950s and 60s which reveled in the latest gadgets that promised to make one's life easier, mass produced food and basically the perfect packaged life but it continues to reflect the state of our lives today. We critique America of the 50s and laugh at how gullible society seemed to be, literally drinking in every aspect of consumer culture they could get there hands on. However there is really nothing different between that period and the era we live in today. While I am fascinated with our study of a period during which the birth of suburbia began (refer Levittown if interested) and even drive-in churches, I am very much part of a push-button era (was born into it) where we want everything simpler, faster and at the touch of our finger tips.

This painting/collage perfectly captures the essence of that idea with its bright (even garish colours). The instant food (magazine cut outs) in the foreground, the high art regulated to a tiny picture on the wall in the background, the concrete jungle of beauty through the window. Every housewife's 1960s dream apparently. I really like it because at the end of the day we can't escape the fact that we are part of a period of mass production where we want to be different but in a sense are also all the same. In Australia packaged instant food has been a life saver for me :)

I'm ending with the words of the folk singer Malvina Reynolds (in the song Little Boxes, 1963)

"And the People in the houses

All went to the university

Where they were put in boxes

And they came out all the same

And theres doctors and lawyers

And business executives

And they are all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look the same"