Culturally Significant Works
Task: Identify the ten most culturally significant works created
in your lifetime and give a brief justification for each.
I have only included one photograph in this list, because I need
to compile a separate top ten for my own field. That is not to devalue the
importance of the photographic image, on the contrary: if they'd gone in here,
there would have been no room for anything else.
My ten most culturally significant works, in no significant
order whatsoever, are:
-
The Angel of the North
-
The FiloFax
-
Tommy (or maybe Quadrophenia)
-
Big Brother
-
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence
-
The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort
-
Hair
-
Designer kitchenware
-
Bohemian Rhapsody
-
Mapplethorpe's Rosie
-
Live Aid 1985
Okay, that's eleven, but who's counting?
The Angel of the North
Image source: Gateshead
Council
Higher than four double-decker buses and with arms almost as long as the wings of a Jumbo jet,
Anthony Gormley's Angel of the North can be seen for miles around as people
travel up and down the A1 at Tyneside, England. It was completed in 1998, and
sparked huge debates about the nature and indeed the purpose of public art.
URLs:
Gateshead
Council
360
degree view (java required)
Sheffield
Hallam Public Art Research Archive
The FiloFax
Image source: Filofax
First produced in a previous guise in 1921, it was not until the
end of the 70s that the brand was relaunched onto the market as the most
desirable of yuppie accessories. During the 1980s it was the must-have tool for
information and time management, and its status remained unchallenged until the
arrival of the PDA in the late 90s. Nowadays, a Filofax has retro appeal and the
appearance of one from a pocket is deemed rather quaint.
Tommy/Quadrophenia
Image source: author's own
There is an entire generation of people teetering on the right
or wrong side of fifty whose lives were shaped by the phenomenon of the Rock
Opera. Tommy, written by The Who's Pete Townshend in 1969, was one of the first.
It spawned a movie directed by Ken Russell which "...expanded Townshend's personal expression to encompass the shared cultural trauma of the postmodern age. Townshend's personal history is just one chord resonating within Russell's cacophony."
(John Demetry, see link below.)
URLs:
Pop
Matters - Tommy article by John Demetry
Wickipedia
- Rock Opera
Big Brother
Image source: Channel 4
The epitome of Reality Television, Big Brother spawned a global phenomenon
and many imitators. Significant for its strategy of putting 'ordinary' (!)
members of the public into a goldfish bowl and allowing a voyeuristic audience
to watch the group dynamics unfold and then crumble spectacularly.
URLs:
Channel
4 Big Brother
Digital
Spy Big Brother
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Image source: author's own
Arguably not a book of my lifetime, as it was first published
privately in 1928 and publicly in 1932, it is the unexpurgated version published
the UK in 1960 (following a court battle) which caught the imagination of my
parents' generation. The book's sexually explicit scenes and anti-modernism
subtext became the year's most sought-after reading. (I, a mere toddler, had many years
to go before discovering this classic).
BBC
On this Day
The Joy of Sex
Image source: author's own
The Joy of Sex was published in 1972 when I was 15. Its arrival
could not have been better timed for my generation of information starved
teenagers whose parents would go to the ends of the earth rather than talk about
sex. The book was the best-read, best-kept secret in school.
URLs:
The
Joy of Sex or The Joy of Cooking
Hair
Image source: http://www.historylink.org
Peace, love, drugs, music... and of course all that shocking
nudity. The show caused uproar both here and in America as it stampeded its way
over 1960s mores and conventions. By way of cultural legacy, censorship in the
theatre became a thing of the past and there is not a person over forty-five who
can't burst into "Aquarius", "Good Morning Starshine" or "Let the Sunshine In"
at the drop of a hat.
Kitchen Design: The Alessi kettle and
Philip Starck's Juicy Salif
 
Image source: author's own
Designed by Michael Graves for Alessi, the kettle became a
domestic icon and set a trend for playful kitchenware in the 1990s. Suddenly,
design had taken over the kitchen. The cultural significance of this Juicy Salif to the designer-kitchen
generation is summed up as follows: useless design, high price-tag, gorgeous to
look at, everyone wants one.
Bohemian Rhapsody
The first pop video, the first pop 'opus', the most enduringly
popular pop song ever...
URLs
Should
you need to have it explained...
Mapplethorpe's Rosie
Image source: Robert
Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe's prescient awareness of what has become one
of today's major examples of paranoia is summed up in this photograph of a
little girl with no knickers. The image caused a furore at the time, and it is satisfying
to know that Rosie, now a grown woman, is not in the slightest bit concerned
about the fact that we all know what her genitals look like.
URLs:
Cincinnati
Contemporary Arts Centre, John Fox
In the Eye of the Beholder,
John Tozer
Live Aid
Image source:
www.herald.co.uk
Not the reluctant follow-up in 2005 but the first one, July 13th, 1985.
The one where Bob Geldof famously didn't say "Give us your f***in'
money", the one where Freddie Mercury effectively performed his swansong,
the one where every generation in every nation of the world united to raise
awareness and aid for Ethiopia.
URLs:
The
Greatest Show on Earth Herald Information Systems
LiveAid
on Wikipedia
Shockvertising:
ads that divide
The also-rans...
Harry Potter, the Mini Cooper, Birmingham Bullring's Rotunda, The Benetton adverts,
Eastenders, The Black and White
Minstrel Show, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Clockwork Orange, Bay City Rollers,
GlamRock, Apple iMac, The Pompidou Centre, Sticky Fingers Album cover, BritArt, Norman Foster Architecture...
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