Nostalgia and Modernity

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BRITAIN IN CLOSE–UP

CULTURAL AND STYLE: NATIONAL AND SELF–EXPRESSION

However, there is an important and some­times destructive tension between nostal­gia and individualism. Tradition and crea­tivity are in conflict. Much of Britain, its creeping Neo-classical revival, its love of the country cottage look, the old–fashioned dress style of the upper class, says much about the way the British perceive them­selves. Because the past is glorious for the British, they prefer its reassurance to the uncertainty of the future. Speaking of fash­ion in its wider sense, Charlotte Du Cann, the leading fashion writer, notes the price the British pay for their nostalgia: "Those who come to Britain want to buy what we sell with utter conviction: our cosy com­forting past. The handcrafted nostalgia that we market so desperately robs contempo­rary design of its rebellious energy."

During the 1980s British nostalgia grew more than ever. Forty-one 'heritage' cen­tres were established. More people than ever went to visit England's historic houses. In 1986 there were 2,131 museums in Britain of which half had been established since 1971.

Anti-Modernism has been a prevalent theme in British culture this century. The popular culture of the urban working class, expressed for example, in cinemas, dance-halls and football stadiums, has been a poor relation. Britain has a far weaker modernist culture than exists in France or Germany, because the British feel less certain about the relationship between architecture, art, design, craft and manufacture. It is safer to live with the quiet authority of a rural past than the uncertainties of the urban present.

Nowhere was this tension more fiercely debated at the end of the 1980s, than in the field of architecture. There was a strong revolt against the use of bare concrete, and against the high-rise buildings which had been so popular in the 1960s and early 1970s. But it was also a protest against the unfamiliarity and apparent brutality of Modernist architecture, as it is called. This was popu­larly associated with cheap public housing and office blocks. In the late 1980s Prince Charles openly championed a return to tra­ditional architecture and building materi­als. For example, he intervened to prevent a Modernist addition to the National Gal­lery, an early nineteenth-century building, and to prevent the construction of what he called a 'Glass Stump', in the City of Lon­don. Prince Charles' interventions and his book on the subject, A Vision of Britain, created a major debate, in which the popu­lar mood was clearly in sympathy with his views.

The attack on modern architecture tend­ed to concentrate on the worst examples and to ignore more exciting modern work. Modernist architects had no intention of defending the poor architecture of many cheap modern buildings. As the leading ar­chitect James Stirling remarked, "the hous­ing architecture of the 1960s was simply a matter of building more and more houses for less and less money until you ended up with a sort of trash."

However nostalgic the British may be, foreign modern influences have been im­mensely important in shaping popular cul­ture since 1945. As a result of the US pres­ence during and after the war, Britain was invaded by American culture — symbolised by chewing gum, jazz, flashy cars and mass production. It spoke of material wealth and social equality, and seemed highly subver­sive to adults, who accepted the existing social order, but highly attractive to the young. By 1959 almost 90 per cent of all teenage spending was conditioned by a ra­pidly Americanising working–class taste. It was not destined to last. In the 1960s Bri­tain was more influenced by the apparent sophistication of the Continent — Italian, French and Spanish cuisine, espresso bars, Scandinavian design, Modernist architec­ture, and even holidays in the sun. This, too, implied a more egalitarian country than Britain traditionally had been.

In the 1960s this mixture of influences that made up a new popular culture exploded in a distinctly English type of pop music — exemplified by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and many others — and a revolu­tion in dress and style, expressed most strik­ingly in the mini-skirt and the exotic range of clothes that expressed social liberation, on sale in London's Carnaby Street. The revolution became permanent as this po­pular culture seeped into even the upperclass reaches of Britain's youth. Neverthe­less, the tension between the popular mod­ernism of rebellious young people and the traditionalism of a staid, silent majority persists.

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