There was a bit of a rumpus at the Berlin ITB travel fair. It was to do with a logo, the one for the Maldives, official partner of the 2016 fair. Was it familiar? Was it rather like the logo used for Spain by Turespaña, the one that the painter Joan Miró had designed all those years ago?
Well, perhaps there was some similarity in the image of the sun, though whether it was a conscious attempt at imitation would be impossible to say. What one can say is that the Maldives' logo lacks the distinctive Miró flavour. Similar maybe but not the discernible style that characterised much of Miró's work.
The Turespaña logo dates from 1984, the year after Miró died. It is a logo that is one of the most recognisable graphic displays of branding in the tourism world. In terms of recognition, it is right up there with New York. While Miró may not be to everyone's taste, there is no denying the unique quality of the logo and of so much of his oeuvre. It is unmistakably Miró and it is for this reason that the logo has acquired such a reputation. It is different. It stands out. It makes a statement. It also captures the essence of culture - art in this instance - and of what Spain represents for so many, the sun. As a logo, it does more or less everything a logo should do.
This was not the first time that Miró had designed a logo for tourism. In the early 1970s he donated one to the Fomento del Turismo, the Mallorca Tourist Board. The Sol de Mallorca should arguably now be as famous and as recognised as the Spanish sun. Perhaps they thought there would be confusion by having two Miró logos. Perhaps it was because the newly formed regional government wanted, from 1983, to have its own logo. Whatever the reason, the Sol de Mallorca ceased to be the abiding image for the island's tourism. There has not been a good one ever since.
A logo is only as good as what supports it and what it represents. If a destination lacks substance, strong attributes and messages, then a logo on its own achieves comparatively little. A strong logo isn't always necessary, though. Palma, for example, is doing fine without having one.
In Palma's case, it is the substance and the marketing of its virtues which are proving to be the bedrock for the city's current success. And one of these is Miró. Of the three giants of twentieth century Spanish art, Miró didn't cultivate fame and notoriety in the way that Dali and Picasso did. For this reason, his name is not as strong on a global stage. But it is strong enough, and precisely because he was an altogether more humble man, it can be argued that there was and is greater substance to him. He didn't need the extravagances of publicity to declare his genius.
Miró, the man, his work and his personality have become something of a marketing concept for Palma. It makes very good sense that he should be, as does the apparent closeness between the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation and the city in using this personality. To promote a city of culture, then who better to do so than an artist with such a strong association with the city and who bequeathed to it the buildings which combine to provide the Miró museum.
Mallorca has had a thing with using individuals for promotional purposes in the past, though this hasn't necessarily been terribly successful. Michael Douglas was arguably one of the more successful, but a weakness of the approach has been to use personalities whose associations are relatively superficial. This cannot be said of Miró. His Palma roots were and are deep.
When writing yesterday's article about the Tramuntana, I had thought about this use of personality. Reflecting on Palma's 365 marketing, Miró as some sort of figurehead is ideal. But Palma's marketing is, as observed yesterday, in a totally different league to that of the Tramuntana. It is heading towards a peak of excellence, while the Tramuntana's has yet to even aspire to make base camp.
If there were to be a personality for the Tramuntana, who would it be? Who, for a global audience, has the substance that Miró has for Palma? There are few candidates. Not Ramon Llull because the world doesn't know him. Not the Archduke Louis Salvador because only German speakers are aware of him. Chopin (and George Sand)? No. A three-month only residence disqualifies both as does the dislike that they expressed for Mallorca. Which leaves?
Someone with a deep association with the mountains and affinity with the culture. Someone whose name goes around the world. Someone who assisted in even better known personalities coming to Mallorca - Ava Gardner, Orson Welles and others. Robert Graves is that someone.
Showing posts with label Robert Graves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Graves. Show all posts
Friday, March 18, 2016
Monday, March 16, 2015
Soft Machine In Mallorca: Daevid Allen
In the 1960s youthful Australians gravitated to the UK in search of what didn't exist in their homeland - culture - though it is fair to say that not all went in the hope of finding intellectual or creative fulfillment. There was also the type that Barrie Humphries, one of those Aussie culture-seekers, parodied to drunken, boorish perfection in the form of his Barry McKenzie character. But of the more cerebral, there were, among others, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Richard Neville, whose greatest contribution to 1960s' counter-culture, "Oz", resulted in him getting a fifteen-month prison sentence for obscenity.
These "new" Australians had some form of association with each other. James knew Greer at Cambridge and he also knew Humphries. He had also at one time edited the University of Sydney's student newspaper, "Honi Soit". Neville knew a later editor and together they created the original "Oz". In the UK, "Oz" was the voice of revolutionary anti-establishment and thus went much further than the satirical "Private Eye", to which both Humphries and Greer contributed. And Neville was a good friend of Greer's.
But before any of them, a young musician by the name of Christopher David Allen had arrived in England. The gravitational pull that he was to experience was not one of association with his Australian contemporaries. He was drawn to Canterbury and to a musical scene whose alumni included and were to include Robert Wyatt and Mike Oldfield. The group which best represented this Canterbury scene was Soft Machine. Of its four original members, Wyatt was the drummer, and the lead guitarist was the young Australian, whose name had by now adopted a slight affectation: Daevid Allen.
If there was an association between Allen and other Australians like Neville and Greer, it was that of the counter-culture, and for Allen and members of Soft Machine that meant hippydom and psychedelia. The bass guitarist with Soft Machine was Kevin Ayers, and he and Allen were to follow paths that were to bring them into the orbit of a faux-hippy, Richard Branson, and, though not because of Branson, to the village of Deià.
The story of how Ayers and Allen both came to know Deià and eventually live there (Allen not for that long) usually points to a time after they had left Soft Machine. In fact, both Ayers and Allen had come to Deià well before Soft Machine were formed in mid-1966. And so had Robert Wyatt. In Wyatt's biography it says that in the summer of 1964 he came to stay with Robert Graves for a second time. With him on that trip was Kevin Ayers, and they were soon to be joined by Daevid Allen. It was in Deià, however, that they began to lay the foundations for what would eventually become Soft Machine: "the music really began to gel". And someone who helped to make the music gel was Graves' son-in-law, Ramón Farrán, who ran the Indigo jazz club in Palma. Farrán also had to keep an eye on two of the musicians. Wyatt could be trusted, as he refused to take drugs. Ayers and Allen on the other hand ... "Deià is a bit dangerous for a person who hasn't got a strong personality. It's really easy to lose yourself in doing nothing, in just having parties, smoking pot and things like that," Farrán is quoted in the biography.
Allen was to also visit Deià in 1966. He said that during a stay with Graves at Easter of that year he took some particularly strong LSD and had a vision of himself as a rock musician playing at what, he reckoned, was to become the Glastonbury music festival. In 1971, he did indeed appear at Glastonbury, then a very different event to now. He had long left Soft Machine by 1971 and had formed Gong, a band that was a kind of musical collective and one whose experimentation drew on the avant-garde music that had inspired him: by the likes of Terry Riley, who he knew from a time in Paris when he also got to know William Burroughs - hence, the Soft Machine name.
But before that appearance at Glastonbury, Allen had established himself in Deià, and in 1969 it was in Deià that the first Gong record was made. It featured the flautist Dider Malherbe, who supposedly had been living in a cave on the Graves' finca. In 1973 came the Branson connection. Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" was the first album to be released by Virgin; Gong's "Flying Teapot" was the second.
Allen's association with Deià was not as strong as that of Kevin Ayers, who lived there for several years and who died in 2013, but nevertheless his death last week has evoked many a memory of his time there and his role in the story of the hippy colonisation of Deià and of Soft Machine in Mallorca.
These "new" Australians had some form of association with each other. James knew Greer at Cambridge and he also knew Humphries. He had also at one time edited the University of Sydney's student newspaper, "Honi Soit". Neville knew a later editor and together they created the original "Oz". In the UK, "Oz" was the voice of revolutionary anti-establishment and thus went much further than the satirical "Private Eye", to which both Humphries and Greer contributed. And Neville was a good friend of Greer's.
But before any of them, a young musician by the name of Christopher David Allen had arrived in England. The gravitational pull that he was to experience was not one of association with his Australian contemporaries. He was drawn to Canterbury and to a musical scene whose alumni included and were to include Robert Wyatt and Mike Oldfield. The group which best represented this Canterbury scene was Soft Machine. Of its four original members, Wyatt was the drummer, and the lead guitarist was the young Australian, whose name had by now adopted a slight affectation: Daevid Allen.
If there was an association between Allen and other Australians like Neville and Greer, it was that of the counter-culture, and for Allen and members of Soft Machine that meant hippydom and psychedelia. The bass guitarist with Soft Machine was Kevin Ayers, and he and Allen were to follow paths that were to bring them into the orbit of a faux-hippy, Richard Branson, and, though not because of Branson, to the village of Deià.
The story of how Ayers and Allen both came to know Deià and eventually live there (Allen not for that long) usually points to a time after they had left Soft Machine. In fact, both Ayers and Allen had come to Deià well before Soft Machine were formed in mid-1966. And so had Robert Wyatt. In Wyatt's biography it says that in the summer of 1964 he came to stay with Robert Graves for a second time. With him on that trip was Kevin Ayers, and they were soon to be joined by Daevid Allen. It was in Deià, however, that they began to lay the foundations for what would eventually become Soft Machine: "the music really began to gel". And someone who helped to make the music gel was Graves' son-in-law, Ramón Farrán, who ran the Indigo jazz club in Palma. Farrán also had to keep an eye on two of the musicians. Wyatt could be trusted, as he refused to take drugs. Ayers and Allen on the other hand ... "Deià is a bit dangerous for a person who hasn't got a strong personality. It's really easy to lose yourself in doing nothing, in just having parties, smoking pot and things like that," Farrán is quoted in the biography.
Allen was to also visit Deià in 1966. He said that during a stay with Graves at Easter of that year he took some particularly strong LSD and had a vision of himself as a rock musician playing at what, he reckoned, was to become the Glastonbury music festival. In 1971, he did indeed appear at Glastonbury, then a very different event to now. He had long left Soft Machine by 1971 and had formed Gong, a band that was a kind of musical collective and one whose experimentation drew on the avant-garde music that had inspired him: by the likes of Terry Riley, who he knew from a time in Paris when he also got to know William Burroughs - hence, the Soft Machine name.
But before that appearance at Glastonbury, Allen had established himself in Deià, and in 1969 it was in Deià that the first Gong record was made. It featured the flautist Dider Malherbe, who supposedly had been living in a cave on the Graves' finca. In 1973 came the Branson connection. Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" was the first album to be released by Virgin; Gong's "Flying Teapot" was the second.
Allen's association with Deià was not as strong as that of Kevin Ayers, who lived there for several years and who died in 2013, but nevertheless his death last week has evoked many a memory of his time there and his role in the story of the hippy colonisation of Deià and of Soft Machine in Mallorca.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
