Coventry Towers (#2)
Monica Petzal; 75 /70 Coventry Dresden FaceTime, Digital, pencil and chalk mounted on linen. 183 x 300 cms, Unique, 2013
This print brings together significant figures past and present associated with Coventry and Dresden.
Coventry
Top Row:
George Eliot 1818–1890, Writer, author of Middlemarch.
Frank Ifield 1937–Pop singer, Four No 1’s in the 1960’s.
Punjabi MC 1973–Rapper and Bhangra Musician
Middle row:
Frank Whittle 1907–1996 Engineer, inventor of the turbojet engine
Ellen Terry 1847–1928 Leading Shakespearean actress.
Lady Godiva 1040–1067 11th-century, Anglo-Saxon noblewoman- a Coventry legend.
Bottom Row:
Hazel O’Connor 1955– Singer–songwriter and actress.
Philip Larkin 1922–1985, Poet, Novelist and Librarian.
Mo Mowlem 1949–2005 Labour Party Politician, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Dresden
Top Row:
Casper David Friedrich, 1774–1840, Romantic Landscape Painter.
Helma Orosz 1953–Christian Democrat politician, Mayor of Dresden from 2008 to 2015. Pictured in front of the VW Glass factory.
Richard Wagner 1813–1883, Musician, composer, theatre director and conductor, particular known for his operas.
Middle row:
August the Strong 1670–1733, Elector of Saxony, Patron of the Arts and Architecture, builder of palaces.
Gret Palucca 1902–1993, Dancer and teacher, pioneer of Modern Dance.
Erich Kästner 1899–1974, Writer and Satirist, author of Emil and the Detectives.
Bottom row:
Gottfried Semper 1803–1879 Architect, designer of the Zwinger Palace, Dresden Opera House and Dresden Synagogue, destroyed 1938.
Melitta Benz 1873–1950, Amalie Auguste Melitta Bentz inventor of the coffee filter, still a family company.
Paula Modersohn Becker 1876–1907, Expressionist painter, a self-portrait.
I Remember, I Remember by Philip Larkin
Coming up England by a different line
For once, early in the cold new year,
We stopped, and, watching men with number plates
Sprint down the platform to familiar gates,
"Why, Coventry!" I exclaimed. "I was born here."
I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign
That this was still the town that had been 'mine'
So long, but found I wasn't even clear
Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates
Were standing, had we annually departed
For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went:
Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots.
'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?'
No, only where my childhood was unspent,
I wanted to retort, just where I started:
By now I've got the whole place clearly charted.
Our garden, first: where I did not invent
Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits,
And wasn't spoken to by an old hat.
And here we have that splendid family
I never ran to when I got depressed,
The boys all biceps and the girls all chest,
Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be
'Really myself'. I'll show you, come to that,
The bracken where I never trembling sat,
Determined to go through with it; where she
Lay back, and 'all became a burning mist'.
And, in those offices, my doggerel
Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor read
By a distinguished cousin of the mayor,
Who didn't call and tell my father There
Before us, had we the gift to see ahead -
'You look as though you wished the place in Hell,'
My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well,
I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said.
'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'
