Get a Life

by Vivienne Westwood

  Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Santa Teresa. The angel holds an arrow, he is piercing her heart with love for Jesus. She is in ecstasy. Nuns wear a wedding ring, they are married to Jesus. Jesus the sacrificial victim is sometimes called the ‘bridegroom’.

  They all accepted the continuous acts of violence. It reminded me of what an ex-prisoner of Guantanamo once said: he felt so guilty for being free when his friends were still in there being tortured that he wanted to go back and share in the pain.

  Why did these two events, the play and the Passion, leave me thinking they were linked? The St Matthew does leave you feeling cleansed: a hypnotic rhythm underlies the soaring music and when it’s over you feel complete and elated and conscious of your breathing. With the Sarah Kane play, the ethos was sadomasochistic to the point of death.

  It is worth taking into account that people have said that Christian religious ceremony has a parallel in sexual feeling – ‘dying’ – to transcend as in orgasm. Ascetics persecuted their body so as to transcend into religious ecstasy – fleas and hair shirts to combat the pricking of desire and lust; children felt the sexual feeling – Jean-Paul Sartre as a little child fantasised about doing a pee-pee in the font. What we are discussing here is morbid though it gives a thrill – sin locked into guilt. S+M is linked to sex. Guilt is paid for by self-denial.

  In the aria the singer will love only Jesus, there is no room for anybody else, certainly not himself. He wants to be pure. Sexual repression is relieved by pain. The objective is to achieve ecstasy but avoid orgasm (this can be sexually thrilling). If orgasm occurs, then S+M becomes a vicious circle.

  APRIL 2016

  SAT 23 APRIL GIORGIONE AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

  The current Royal Academy exhibition is In the Age of Giorgione. In the sixteenth-century, Venetian painting was at its height. It signalled the Renaissance with its Humanism and discovery of the Greek mind. It had probably the first use of the word ‘modern’ when Vasari, the first art historian, used the phrase maniera moderna to describe what was happening.

  I want to talk about four works in the show. The first is a Virgin and Child by Bellini. When you say Bellini, you have to say first, colour: unsurpassed! Though engaged with each other, the people in this painting keep their distance from the viewer; the painting is an icon to be worshipped. His portraits also keep their distance.

  Giorgione includes the viewer. This is the difference between the old formula and the new. Now we get involved in the emotions; each painting is a vision, a story, a world, a life. In his Portrait of a Man, Giorgione was able to capture his direct relationship with the sitter. Giorgione, who died from the plague in 1510, aged around thirty-three, is a legend. We know little about him and over the years critics have debated which paintings can be firmly attributed to him – very few. He intrigues because his work has an internal mystery; he paints what he sees, what only he can call forth.

  Portraits by Albrecht Dürer are also included in the exhibition. He too attracts the viewer to the living emotional character of the subjects of this paintings. He was working in Venice at the time as Giorgione, who admired him. He had walked to Venice from Nuremberg – people did in those days – stopping at inns along the way. I find it awesome that Dürer’s mother had fourteen children and that he (genius) was the only one who survived.

  Giorgione was a master by the age of twenty and famous in Venice. Titian – who trained with Bellini at twenty, was five years younger when he worked with Giorgione on the frescoes of the façade of the city’s Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Titian copied his method, lived to be old and (Andreas tells me) went on to invent three quarters of all the original ideas of painting.

  Anticlockwise, from top: Bellini’s Virgin and Child, Giorgione’s Portrait of a Man, Titian’s Christ and the Adulteress, Dürer’s Portrait of the Artist’s Mother.

  His painting Christ and the Adulteress (1508) tells the whole of a story from the Bible in one go. A woman ‘taken in adultery’ is dragged off to be stoned. Jesus says, ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’ Nobody does. A Hollywood film could not tell the story so well.

  JUNE-AUGUST 2016

  These are my last entries before this diary goes to press. I have been working continuously: on fashion (a third of my life is dedicated to Quality v. Quantity – reducing, clarifying, controlling – so that we become a model company for the future – Buy less, choose well, make it last!); Climate Revolution; and, on top of that, after our publisher had edited the diaries, reducing them to a half from the online entries, I have been doing the final edit.

  The reason for the diary is to clarify opinion. Reading it, you will access my point of view, which is completely heretical to that of the status quo regarding culture and political economy. You will get all this – and it is easier to assimilate in a book than on the internet.

  I did not want a long book. The reason the fashion shows are not given equal weight is because when I referred to them in the online diary, sometimes just mentioning them, they were covered equally on our main VW website (now fused with the Climate Revolution site). I have added a few texts and graphics which were not in the diary but are on the websites. Square brackets and italic text indicate comments I made whilst editing.

  Writing a diary is a great thing to do for yourself. It marks your life, you know where you’re up to, and where you’re going. You pin down your ideas, adjust and develop: a constant resumé and improvement. I already told you that my job as an activist is to pin down, clarify, analyse. You can’t fight until you know your enemy.

  Our enemy is that globally a few thousand control seven billion. We in England have to fight the present government – they belong to these few [antipeople].

  THURS 9 JUNE DANIIL TRIFONOV

  I am picking out only the really important events for these months. This was major. Daniil Trifonov, the latest thing; Rachmaninov, Wigmore Hall. He covered the keys and the piano and he covered me and the rest of the world. A big musican, cut fine – a beauty, straight hair all the time hitting his face. Focus! Shit! Half the time his eyes were shut.

  SUN 19 JUNE FIRST THEY CAME FOR ASSANGE SHOW

  MAN show Milan. We fused the VW collections MAN and women – unisex. We won’t do a separate women’s catwalk show. But next season we will present them both together in London.

  First they came for Assange. This was the title and our show was one of a number of simultaneous events, including Patti Smith, Brian Eno and Noam Chomsky, taking place in ten countries across the world to protest the illegal detention (this in accord with UN ruling) of Julian, beginning his fifth year in the embassy.

  The man next to me is so cool in his simple knitted toga dress. I too am wearing a toga – just a tube of sequins which I have pulled down to show my ‘I am Julian Assange T-shirt’ (my face). I think the British press do not support human rights for Julian because they are jealous. He tells the truth and they are not allowed.

  FRI 24 JUNE BREXIT

  Brexit. The night before, I went to the Ecuadorian Embassy where Julian was interviewing people for live transmission on social media. I gave a speech asking people to vote Remain – on the basic principle that Peace and Co-operation is better than War and Competition.

  The result next day – ‘Britain is out of Europe’ – immediately translated itself in my mind as ‘No hope to save the Planet’. Because our economic system (Rot$) is based on war and competition. The only way to get out of this destruction is the Green Economy. How do you get enough people to see that? I think if I don’t manage to move something within two years then … I really am desperate. I have purposely written ‘I’ not ‘we’ here because I have to find a way to link that will work.

  I read accounts of why people voted Brexit. They were lovely people, sincere and motivated. One strong sentiment was, ‘We Brits can roll our sleeves up, we don’t need them taking our money and telling us what to do.’ Whatever the reason, they all made the same mistake, the same mistake as I did. We all think of o
urselves as ‘we’. Who are ‘we’? We are in solidarity with the Brits; in my case we are in solidarity with Europe. Mistake: let’s remember – globally a few thousand control seven billion.

  ‘We’ does not exist politically. Britain is sixty-four million people completely confused by the mainstream media and controlled by 500 politicians who ignore public opinion except at elections, when they make fantastic promises. So even though the Brexit result was unexpected, political control stayed with the antipeople. Theresa May, David Cameron, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel – some worse than others, you might think: they’re all the same. They belong to a global club. All profit goes to the club. A few thousand antipeople control seven billion people.

  One thing Brexit will expose more clearly to people is that government policy is making them ever poorer.

  Economy after Brexit

  UK cut off from the world

  Bank of England loses its position as the world’s most important bank. Greater focus shifts to national central banks in Paris and Frankfurt.

  Headquarters of multinational companies – the big players of Canary Wharf – leave and relocate.

  UK politicians increase tax breaks for corporations and rich investors to encourage the Chinese and others to come. EU residents in the UK lose their status.

  London: Land-grabbing for hundreds of glass tower blocks/skyscrapers stops. They remain empty.

  House prices fall.

  Because of London’s cultural institutions, tourism continues. It is possibly our only relationship to the US.

  Our present shambolic antipeople government accepts TTIP trade deal – Britain is fed to corporate lions to carve up and wreck.

  London is poorer/whole country faces poverty.

  • Tax cuts for the rich = more austerity.

  Which is what caused Brexit in the first place

  FRI 15 JULY LAND TAX

  Fred Harrison, Director of the Land Research Trust, and member of IoU from its first general meeting, came to talk to Climate Revolution about Land Tax. At the moment CR is the motor of IoU, and when we develop our strategies Land Tax could be part of that. He explained that Denmark is always top of the happiest country polls and has no big housing problem because its tax system rests on a Land Tax, which gives fair distribution of wealth. Important for building the Green Economy.

  TUES 19 JULY GREEN GRASS GAS

  My son Joe, who campaigns against fracking, came to see us, along with Dale Vince from Ecotricity – a not for profit company that delivers 19 per cent of our electricity supply. Dale is now challenging government imposition of fracking policy (80 per cent of our population is against it) by applying for planning permission for Green Grass Gas, offering farmers money for the grass in their field instead of them agreeing to the danger of fracking.

  If NGOs would announce their support for Ecotricity by asking all of us to switch our energy supply to green energy that would stop antipeople subsidy (it’s our money) for fossil fuels (for the benefit of investors: first battle won).

  THURS 21 JULY MONSANTO – END ECOCIDE

  I’m a big supporter of End Ecocide, and they asked me to make a two-minute video to camera. Here is what I performed:

  Monsanto

  The crime of ecocide is the greatest crime of all

  Everything is connected

  If the grass dies we die

  If the worms die we die

  If the insects die we die

  Without birds we die

  Without fish we die

  Without plankton we die

  Everything is connected, we all die together

  SAT 23 JULY THE SEAGULL AT THE NATIONAL

  The Seagull at the National Theatre with friends Dominic Hourd and Peter Olive. Stunning – set, acting. I’m having trouble with theatre – going a bit deaf – missed details of the relationships but got all the agony the actors projected. My God, by the end I was literally holding myself together. I couldn’t clap.

  TUES 26 JULY MONTEVERDI CHOIR

  We designed the ladies’ new jacket for the Monteverdi Choir. It will go well with the men’s black and white and the shining wood of the musical instruments.

  Our new ladies’ jackets for the Monteverdi Choir.

  THURS 28 JULY TAKE FLYING MORE SERIOUSLY

  Dominic sent me a copy of The Seagull and I read it on the way to the Tyrol. The plane was delayed and we were four hours waiting in the airport. I didn’t mind as I hate airports and I think it’s good we suffer, just so we take flying more seriously and don’t think we can come and go as easy as we please.

  FRI 29 JULY – WEDS 3 AUG IN THE TYROL AGAIN

  In the Tyrol with Andreas’s family: walking, writing some of the tracts for this last diary entry, reading. Andreas has recommended Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Nelson Mandela had called him ‘the writer in whose company the prison walls came down’. Achebe’s novel is about the tribes of the lower Niger: how the British had set up a trading post with their courts and missionaries and ruled all the black people who were held together in clusters or separate tribes – different ethics. It is one book of a trilogy. I am now halfway through the second book. The insight, the wisdom of the author! This really is who we are – a mirror of Homo sapiens.

  Mattias, a boy of nine, was helping Andreas’s brother Martin with the cows. He did the work of a man, rising at six and going to bed at ten. He liked milking best – you have to begin milking by hand and only then can you attach the mechanical system, when the milk will run. He played the accordion with panache: you wanted to dance. Martin is so proud of him and Andreas loved him, called him (to me) a Buddha, because he has big ear lobes and is sweet and wise. Here he was asked to get into the cart and flatten the hay and he can’t get out again yet. Oh yes, when he’s back at school he loves in his free time to go riding in the forest on his motorbike.

  Mattias – the little Buddha.

  Talking and eating on occasion with the family, I miss Franz, Andreas’s father. Ruhe in Frieden. Franz died at the beginning of May, aged 86. I went with Andreas to the funeral in Fügen – there must have been near to 300 people there plus the local firemen, because he had for twenty years, at some period of his life, been a chief of the fire brigade. He was the life and soul of the village, always laughing. Andreas’s family are farmers; on the father’s side, they are smiths. It’s a tradition in Austria that all the gravestones are made out of wrought iron, so if you go to the graveyard there, they’re made by Franz or his father. Each one is different in design.

  He was famous throughout the area and in northern Italy for wrought-iron chandeliers, balustrades, gates. Andreas was very emotional – his father didn’t realise how talented he (Franz) was. What a superior craftsman and designer.

  THURS 4 – SAT 6 AUG SALZBURG FESTIVAL

  On the train to Salzburg. Still writing.

  Salzburg: flat land surrounds a giant rock, on top of which are castle walls enclosing an entire village with court, prison, workshops. The first builder was a cardinal who in c.1150, for his own protection, sided with the pope in his wars with the Holy Roman Emperor. Impregnable of course. Rich.

  Here for the festival (down below), staying with our friend, Thaddeus. He is really important, working exhaustively for the festival. Many guests, including Bianca Jagger, who is a big music lover. Thaddeus is an art dealer and many guests respect modern art as having its place, although they don’t understand it. Count me in with them except that I consider most of it a mistake: i.e. it has no reason to exist and just adds to the confusion. But I really like Thaddeus and I enjoyed particularly talking to Fritz, a cardiac doctor who told me his view of the world – and he did know. There was not much I could add; he understood it like I do. The Queen of Sweden supports the festival and came to dinner but as she is above politics she had not heard of Julian. I will write to her.

  Thaddeus knows my views on art and thinks I should give again the talk I gave at Frieze with a view to selling the collage.


  I won’t tell about the two operas we saw (I love the opportunity to dress up) because I don’t think you will learn much from the descriptions. But on the third night we went to a concert with a wonderful programme and performance: Arvo Pärt, Swansong; Gustav Mahler, Kindertotenlieder; Anton Bruckner, Symphony No.4 in E flat major and WAB 104 – Romantic. Bianca was in raptures and afterwards stayed talking to Zubin Mehta, the conductor. ‘Did you notice he did the Bruchner without a score?’ Andreas has been designing the new uniform of the Vienna Philharmonic.

  SAT 6 AUG SALZBURG RESIDENZ

  Great! Our visit to the Salzburg Archbishop’s Residence. Michael Rottmayr. Big painter in the eighteenth century – ceilings, walls, fresco and oil, intimate works; reduction of means, raw fact and bravura. A special exhibition, going through 1.5 kilometres of rooms, showed a selection of the Princely Collections of Lichtenstein. Mostly about nudity. During the Renaissance, artists’ subject matter focused on pagan gods: nudity was allowed to gods but not to men and women. We stayed four hours and saw paintings and sculpture but missed the musical instruments and curiosities.

  My favourite painting was Rembrandt’s Cupid with the Soap Bubble. This little boy blowing bubbles has just looked up at you. I was weak with emotion. It was like you were looking at your own child, it rang so true. You have to see the real thing, not a photo. Discussing it later, Andreas compared this Cupid to the Red Boy, with a bird on a string and his toys on the floor around. Goya in the Metropolitan Gallery in New York. Andreas loves that child even more. I mentioned Manet’s young flute player. Yes, they are as good.