More Meades

[Nick Armstrong]

is it Meades wish to be an intellectual niche comedian, I couldn't help but see him in my minds eye delivering to camera while performing a Bernie Clifton Ostrich act, or as Groucho Marx....Still far far far better than Alvar Lidell in Southport....

[aeolium]

I thought this was really disappointing, even worse than the first episode. I am quite ambivalent about the various Brutalist styles and would like to learn more about them (including for instance some of the Yugoslavian buildings to which Meades made tantalising reference near the end of his programme). I'd like to learn more about why they were built - preferably from those with inside knowledge - and what they were like inside (where they had insides). Yet what Meades provided was a succession of images and the aesthetic origins of the Brutalist style, together with interminable digressions about totally unrelated aspects of modern life that irritated him. It was noticeable too that he emphasised the character of the sublime as inspiring terror with no mention of the qualities of nobility, grandeur or wonder; the belief that architecture should inspire dread was also Nietzsche's. And despite Meades' Nietzschean celebration of the architect as supreme, independent artist towering over the other mortal pygmies, it's also noticeable that most of the buildings he highlighted (and those alluded to elsewhere, such as the Soviet Constructivist style and the post-war Yugoslav creations) were built for the state. And the state certainly had an interest in the expression of its power through gigantic, aggressive constructions. [Compare the description of the Ministry of Truth in 1984: "an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up terrace after terrace, three hundred metres into the air"] Quite a few of these buildings are either actual military structures, or hark back in remembrance of military conflict, like the monument in the shape of three giant fists in Nis, Serbia.

There are buildings in this style that are impressively imaginative and which are valued not only for their striking visual aspect but also for their use of the space inside (I enjoy the QEH and used to like visiting the now sadly closed old Birmingham Library). But despite - or perhaps because of - Meades' fanatical advocacy, it's hard to get to appreciate it. Sadly, all Meades' programmes are mainly about Meades, about his omnipresent image, his aesthetics, his opinions (mostly contemptuous) about everything under the sun.

As a far better series - whatever you think about the architecture - I recommend The Brits Who Built The Modern World. Here you get to see the outside and inside of buildings, what their architects were trying to achieve, what detractors and advocates thought of them. There is no presenter in sight and the commentary is concise and to the point.

[mercia]

I'm not sure I would watch a Meades programme to learn anything about architecture, but just to sit back and marvel at his digestion of Roget's Thesaurus. Isn't that the general idea ?

[aeolium]

I'm not sure I would watch a Meades programme to learn anything about architecture, but just to sit back and marvel at his digestion of Roget's Thesaurus. Isn't that the general idea ?

Maybe it is for some. As far as I'm concerned the digestion has given him far too much bile.

[eighthobstruction]

Seeing Meades in the Nairn documentary gave us a chance to see what Meades might be like over a cupof tea....quite different....

Yes I agree with you aeolium in general....the eclectic linking/connecting of the bric a brac of a lifetime of reading /looking/listening is interesting to me though....a helter skelter ride through a psyche of a man of similar age to me, a man who likes to be provocative and ambivalent, humourous mumbo jumbo....a white elephant stall at an atrocity exhibition....

I'd be just as happy watching and listening to him in free flow walking on a windy deserted beach....and after his usual oleagininous ontological mewsing, and epistemological epiphanies, I'd just love to see the real man take off the black suit, roll his sleeves up put on a knotted hankerchief and say "cor I'm bushed, I could do with a cup of tea and a fag....where's the nearest chipper - dies non"

[aeolium]

I'd just love to see the real man take off the black suit, roll his sleeves up put on a knotted hankerchief and say "cor I'm bushed, I could do with a cup of tea and a fag....where's the nearest chipper - dies non"

Yes, or drinking Irn-Bru while wearing his leopardskin onesie and watching a football match between Albion Rovers and East Stirlingshire

To be fair, his meanderings through Hanseatic towns were quite enjoyable, as were some of the Scottish forays. He just seems a lot more cantankerous these days.

[eighthobstruction]

oooo yes i forgot his onesie....cabaret brut....

[gurnemanz]

He's back. BBC4 10 pm tonight. Architecture of Franco's Spain. No doubt, sunglasses will be called for.

[muzzer]

Marvellous. Can recommend his cookbook, Plagiarist in the Kitchen. Quintessentially Meades.

[Serial_Apologist]

He's back. BBC4 10 pm tonight. Architecture of Franco's Spain. No doubt, sunglasses will be called for.

Thanks Gurney - would otherwise have missed this. Meades is a great favourite of mine. I wonder if he's kept the weight off? - we'll see!

[Richard Tarleton]

Superb programme, Meades at his mordant finest. I love the way he appears looming over the architecture he's talking about, or projected on the sides of buildings. Good use made of the Osborne bull, once ubiquitous on country skylines, now not so much [film buffs will recall Penélope Cruz making her debut making out under one in the black comedy Jamon Jamon ]. He very briefly appears without his trademark shades. He pronounces Caudillo as Caudijo, the "ll" sound a tricky one for non-native speakers but he goes for the purist version rather than "Caudi - y - o" which most people would say nowadays.



He reminds us that all the most important accounts of 20th century Spain have been written by Anglophone writers, the Spanish themselves still having difficulty dealing with their past - he mentions Paul Preston [The Spanish Holocaust, etc.], Giles Tremlett [Ghosts of Spain], Jeremy Treglown [Franco's Crypt: Spanish Culture and Memory since 1936]...did he mention Gerald Brenan? Not sure, but Brenan's The Spanish Labyrinth is still the best account of the economic and social background to the Civil War, remarkable not least for having been written in 1943 - one of my tutors called it one of the best history books ever written.

My first visit to Spain - a country I've got to know well - was in 1972, when Franco still had 3 years to go but by which time the dictadura had morphed into the dictablanda (a bitter Spanish joke - dictadura - dictatorship, duro/a, hard...). The main drag in Madrid, now the Gran Via, was still called the Avenida José Antonio, after the "martyred" head of the Falange. On a visit to Santiago de Compostela in Franco's native Galicia in 2000, for an OU summer school, I was amazed to see a figurine of Franco for sale in a souvenir shop, something you'd be unlikely to find elsewhere in Spain, I'd have thought.

[muzzer]

Just catching up with this. One of his best imho. Veritably jam-packed (as usual) with nuggets to explore further and, trite though it may sound, SUNSHINE.