I popped over to the Tate St Ives yesterday to check out an exhibition entitled If Everybody had an Ocean. In doing so I left behind the sanctuary of my local beach (one that sits just a couple of miles from Land's End and, as such, is often just too far for the tourists) for the mayhem that is St Ives on a bank holiday Monday. I don't know what happened to my cognitive faculties, other than to assume that they deserted me, for I forgot all about the inevitable impossibility of parking within a five mile radius of St Ives and, with the boys fighting in the back of the car, found that tempers were running high by the time I took Karen's advice and opted for the park and ride option. A train ride and a stroll among the seagulls later, we found ourselves somewhat calmer and inside the Tate. Outside sundry would-be surfers attempted to learn the art on the mass of surging white water that characterized Porthmeor, to no discernible avail. They would have been far better off abandoning trying to surf in such conditions and wandering into the Tate. For there, above and beyond the wonderful collection of works by the likes of Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon, Bridget Riley and Trevor Bell, was an exhibition by turns beguiling and thought-provoking, illuminating and intangible, one that hinges on the life and work of Brian Wilson, the driving force behind the Beach Boys.
If Everybody had an Ocean is a collection of paintings, sculptures, installations, photo-text works and films that evoke the trajectory of Wilson's remarkable life and music as well as contemporaneous developments in art history and Southern California. There is, I admit, something of a paradox in suggesting that the putative surfers battling to reach the non-existent line-up at Porthmeor would have been better served taking in a show devoted to his life, for Brian Wilson was famously a Beach Boy Who Couldn't Surf. In this, he was not alone, for only Dennis Wilson, the middle of the three brothers, had mastered stand-up surfing. Nevertheless, as the curator of the exhibition, Alex Farquharson, explains in an essay contained in Brian Wilson: An Art Book (ISBN: 0-9545025-1-5), Wilson came to embody the cultural changes wrought by surfing, so that his music can be seen as a prism through which to view a number of developments in art from the early 1960s to the present.
By the age of 24, by which time he had recorded Smile - an album spoken of in hushed tones of reverence by the cognoscenti - as well the Beach Boys' numerous classic hits, Wilson all but vanished from the music scene. The Dark Ages that ensued lasted a long time. Wilson's weight ballooned to 300 pounds, he drank to excess, took a lot of cocaine and became mentally ill. The jury is out as to the efficacy of a punishing regime devised by therapist Dr Eugene Landy, but, as Farquharson writes, "in recent years, Brian seems at last to have found the health and happiness that eluded him for so long." He has returned to the stage and his reputation as a singer, songwriter, arranger and performer is set in stone. Moreover, as Farquharson says: "With the Beach Boys arguably all but extinct, Brian Wilson has emerged from the group's long shadow."
Wilson is unquestionably a fascinating figure, but just as compelling is the world evoked by his music. That anybody would take seriously lyrics about surfing, hot rods and beach babes might have appeared risible only a few years ago, but surf culture has been with us for some time now and merits serious analysis as much as, if not more so than, many other subcultures that have basked in the ambivalent glow of mainstream interest. But undoubtedly the crux of the exhibition's appeal lies in Wilson himself, a man whose inner turmoil was worlds away from the ostensibly all-pervasive good vibrations of the Beach Boys and their milieu. Indeed, Wilson's fall into darkness acts as the corollary to the end of the American Dream in the mid-sixties, a sad but ineluctable post-script to the unquestioning, wide-eyed innocence of Bruce Brown and The Endless Summer.
And yet... The ride might be over, but the search goes on. As surfers, we know this, and as an art historian Farquharson is on the same page. He puts it thus: "Having ridden out the waves of fashion, celebrity and commerce - aspects of the 'Culture Industry' that he found oppressive - [Wilson's] best music has come to stand for his belief in the emancipatory potential of art in ways his life and his pop group never did. His music has a resilient beauty. That resilience is, in its own strange way, a form of resistance."
Or, as the press release avows, "the show ends on a cautiously optimistic note, namely that no amount of turmoil and commercial exploitation can detract from the power of the music."
For "the music", read surfing.
If Everybody had an Ocean runs at the Tate St Ives, Cornwall until 23 September; the images here appear in the show and are reproduced with the Tate's kind permission. For more information see the Tate St Ives.
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