The Streatham & Brixton Chess Blog

I, like many chess players, am somewhat prickly when it comes to the use of chess analogies, metaphors, similes, and more or less any phrase that mentions our game and is uttered by someone who doesn't play it. Indeed, even when the use of chess seems not only reasonable but even interesting, I still can't help but feel incredibly grumpy about it.

And I have to admit, I don't really know why. It's not as if in a packed pub, with empty pints all round, and ten minutes to closing time, I haven't been heard to describe the sweaty mess of competing bodies at the bar as a scrum - yet I assume rugby fans don't want to tackle me to the ground and splash my face with mud in punishment, or whatever it is rugby players do to one another when they're cross about slips of language. See, I've never played the game, nor in fact known anyone who has. And 'slips of language', incidentally, is a cricket metaphor that sometimes catches people out.

Back to chess, or rather 'chess'. Why does it get to me so much? Maybe it's just the mass of examples in the news. From this last week or two, for instance, I can guarantee you that

• Sarah Palin didn't make a 'chess' move,

• Andy Roddick didn't execute a 'chess' game strategy,

• withdrawing from Iraq isn't like moving 'chess' pieces,

• the Maldives Journalist Association is wrong to accuse the Maldives Broadcasting Cooperation of playing 'chess' with Television Maldives' editorial board,

unless they, literally, enjoy friendly games over lunch together. And they haven't been.

No, like with dogs, a good chess simile should be for life, not just for Christmas - and there's no such thing as a good chess simile. Or metaphor, comparison, analogy, anything. Or so I had been telling myself until I read John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. I know, I know, I know. "Aha!", you're thinking. "Chivers has been taken in by some Le Carré chess metaphor. Well, I'll show him in the comments what's what. Checkmate ahoy!"


But, no. The truth is much worse, much more distressing. Whilst reading this book, I kept on thinking to myself thoughts along these lines: this is just like a chess game. What will be the spy's next move across these sixty four squares of international espionage? Such strategy as to match a Grandmaster's! Bang bang bang bang: such thoughts would just shoot into my head, and nothing could be done about it.
And note too that is not only regarded as the best spy novel ever written, not only regarded as one of the best novels ever written, but I personally recommend it. Yes, that's right. I do.

As I was saying: reading The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is, I confess, like watching a game of chess being played. A very good game in fact. There, I've said it. I admit it. How horrible.

But don't fear. I'm not going to try to convince you I'm right. For example, I'm not going to argue that Agent Leamas's well-calculated and cunningly-disguised journey from West Berlin to East Berlin resembles an elaborate knight's tour, just because it goes via HQ in London, a dingy local library, prison, and penultimately Holland, all seemingly to fool the enemy into thinking he's genuinely defecting rather than setting a trap. Likewise, I'm not going to argue that his British Communist girlfriend Liz Gold's straightforward route from the local library to East Berlin - taken one step at a time - the reader uncertain whether she is headed for some glorious coronation into the ranks of her Communist comrades - or whether she is merely to be sacrificed - having strayed too far from her British ranks - resembles that of an isolated pawn being pushed perilously toward promotion. That would be absurd.



And anyway, we all know the key difference between chess pieces and people, the key difference that makes any comparison between the two pointless, right? In other words, simply that people have free-will, consciousness, and make their own decisions; chess pieces don't. Except, in this book, the calculations of the British spy boss Control take full account of the personhood of his operatives; their human feelings calculated out like a complex tactical sequence. Indeed Leamas is wholly lied to by Control, and as such behaves exactly as Control has calculated he will. Free-will counts for nothing: in each seemingly-novel situation each character faces, each decision each character believes they are making has already been factored in; their supposed decisions as inevitable as an only move.

Each decision, but one. In the final scene of the book, Leamas teeters on top of the Berlin wall. His superior officer George Smiley waits beneath him on the West side, calling him over to safety. On the East side, Liz's fresh corpse lies slumped beneath him, riddled with bullets. Surely he will jump to safety, then resume his career, or retire somewhere comfy. Surely he will choose the West. But, no. He chooses the East side, although he will die for it in the blink of an eye. He would rather dwell by Liz's body for a moment, than rejoin the rest for however long. And in choosing the temporary warmth of her crumpled figure, Leamas chooses to come in from the cold of the vicious game - even if it is for just one final fleeting moment, to be swiftly followed by his own mute slaughter.

And for the existential sake of our pieces, whom never complain about being bundled back into their boxes, adjusted this way and that, sacrificed and blundered left right and centre, we should be grateful there is no such equivalent of that in our little game.

This Postscript steps out from Chess in Art IV "Die Schachpartie", Max Oppenhiemer's vigorous and invigorating picture of chess in a Berlin café in the late 1920s. It is a ramble around the early 20th century avant-garde in Europe and beyond.

There is a later companion piece to the 1920s picture by MOPP that shows Emanuel Lasker, World Chess Champion from 1894 to 1921 at the board, apparently pressing home his attack with the white pieces:


MOPP maintains the same energetic touch as before, and appears even to reprise the same narrative trick: look again; Lasker is not actually playing a game against Herr Grün-Jacket, they are playing over the moves of someone else's game, the one in the red book, and Herr Blau-Jacket is calling it out. This explains why Herr G-J tolerates with Lasker's slovenly chess etiquette – in a proper game he wouldn't put up with his opponent dropping fag ash on d3, ex-World Champion or Nein (note 1).

How was it that MOPP was painting chess champ Lasker in the 1920s in Berlin? Did they just happen to frequent the same Konditori where they could feed their addictions to Kaffee, Kuchen, and Zigaretten. Was MOPP there to admire, in situ, Lasker's renowned coffee-house style which both Siegbert Tarrasch and Bobby Fischer considered conduct unbecoming of a World Champion? Or was there a more substantial meeting of minds?

Some clue may come from Lasker's kith and kin. His older brother Berthold was married from 1894 and 1899 to Else Lasker-Schülers, a poet who a year or so later married the founder of Der Sturm, the Haus magazine of German Expressionism. Unsurprisingly her work graced its columns at length. Even without assuming some cordiality among ex-in-laws (a big ask) Lasker must have been moving in the same circles as the leading lights of the Mittel-European intelligentsia, for whom MOPP was court painter doing a nice line in "psychological portraiture", having had his own done by Egon Schiele, no less.


Now that we have wandered on to German Expressionism, here’s a good example of what some have likened to Fauvism German-style (note 2)


This is a love-in in more ways than one. Apart from the carnal pleasures invited by the reposing Mädchen, the two players, who are ungallantly lost for the moment in the cerebral delights of the game, are two of Kirchner's Expressionist comrades-in-arms; so, mutual admiration all round.

You can see the affinities with Fauvism (strong colour, dynamic design) but Expressionism keeps some distance from its decorative French cousin and heads for the raw and edgy. Heckel's girl friend (or Mueller's, or both) for example, is no odalisque à la Matisse, but is her own woman. You could even leave out the colour (unthinkable for Fauvism) and still get the Expressionist feel; they did wood-cuts to prove it, such as this one by another Otto Möller in the 1920s:


Same plunging view point, raking diagonals and queasy perspective; drop in a nude top left and you'd have a Kirchner look-a-like.

The German Expressionists were hammered by World War One and the style morphed in the 20s and 30s to something more engaged with, and critical of, the Zeitgeist, glorying in the handle "Neue Sachlichkeit", or New Objectivity. The rise of Fascism finally did for it in Europe. Kirchner and others, including Kandinsky and Klee (note 3) were denounced as "degenerate" by the Nazis and he committed suicide in 1938. Lasker-Schülers was beaten up and fled, as did MOPP. Lasker, too, ended up in the States.

So the USA was a refuge for many, and from there Expressionism re-emerged, after World War Two, on to the international stage in a home-brewed Abstract variety, promoted to establish New York as the West's cultural bastion in the Cold War, in place of a debilitated Paris and divided Berlin. For Abstract Expressionism think Jackson Pollock.

There was a less celebrated school of Expressionism in Boston, and Henry Schwartz of Chess in Art XX was a member:


Schwartz's use of collage emphasises flatness and pattern. There is a rather Fifties feel to it: the pieces sit on a Tupperware board and their shapes are echoed in the Formica screen behind; a bargain from Woolworth's, for sure, that would grace any condo. There are people at play, albeit with their identities ironed out leaving just the imprint of pensive silhouettes hooked on their fingers; they play a chess game with each other and a perspective game among the overlaps. Their expressive concentration infuses the scene: we are in the presence of Deep Thought. Maybe an "ism" for this half-way-house-style would be "Semi Abstract Expressionism".

The Boston group were active as far back as the 30s and 40s, before Jackson Pollock et al cornered the limelight and the dollars. They traced their influences to Europe, and like many of his German Expressionist forerunners Henry Schwartz, highly respected, was a troubled soul. He was in reclusive depression for 15 years up to 2007, and in spite of regaining his lucidity he died on 21 February 2009, aged 81 (note 4). To a dedicated artist: RIP.





Notes

1. Edward Winter in his Chess Note 4091 [scroll down - ejh] asks if anyone can identify the other players or the position. The latter appears more plausible than in many a chess painting, and in a bigger view it looks like there are corrections, maybe suggested by Lasker in the interests of verisimilitude.

2. We touched on Fauvism in Postscript: Gone Luco.

3. See Postscript: Slow Triangulation.

4. Charlies Giuliano, Henry Schwartz 1927-2009. Berkshire Fine Arts, 20 February 2009.

Via a Ninja, news of why Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman believes that the project of science is analogous to watching the gods play games of chess - except no-one's told you the rules, so you're trying to work it out for yourself:



Maybe, maybe not. After all, humans can agree to change the rules of chess, which have evolved over centuries into the game we know today. And they're still changing in modern times: for instance, castling with a rook promoted on the e-file was banned by FIDE in 1972. Even more recently, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has changed the rules so that a player not seated as the game starts automatically loses.

Just what is it that makes today’s chess sets so different, so appealing? Not a lot. They all look the same. So very Staunton. And this was for Julien Levy, promoter of Surrealist Art, the inspiration for his art-event "The Imagery of Chess" in 1944 in New York. It showed off sets for the 20th century. Hypermodern times demanded hypermodern pieces.


Part exhibition, part multi-media installation, part performance art: The Imagery had chess sets, chess-in-art works, and chess-related modern music from 32 chess-interested artists and designers, with Surrealist-in-Chief André Breton divesting himself of chessic epigrams.

In the midst of all the fun and games the odd game of chess was shoe-horned in, notably in a "'pre-happening' happening" where blindfold wizard Koltanowski took on Levy and six of his chums, using various anti-Staunton sets, with Duchamp as facilitator. Not distracted by the outasight and out of sight pieces the maestro, visualising in Staunton presumably - so last century - chalked up a 6.5-0.5 victory including among his victims Max Ernst whose "The King plays with his Queen" (Chess in Art XIII) was in the show.

Artist and critic Larry List has magnificently chronicled this and later chess/art exhibitions (note 1) and shows how 1944 wasn't the first time modern design and chess paraphernalia had played with each other. Levy's event included some sets conceived twenty or so years earlier, for example the celebrated Bauhaus set, a brutal but refined fusion of form and function.



In de-cluttered style the Bauhaus set sits snugly in its own designer box and would look good on the shelves of Muji – so this century.

At about the same time in the twenties the Russian Constructivists displayed three large squares of colour using primary red, yellow and blue, declared the end of painting as we know it (Duchamp would have approved) and turned their talents to applied design in the service of the Revolution. For a Workers' Club they created a chess table that was recently reconstructed at Tate Modern (note 2) and in 2003 in Japan.


The Comrades weren't on Levy's guest list for obvious reasons; a shame because for panache their design gets top marks, with nice practical touches such as integral seating for players and (in the Tate version) boxes for pieces. The combo certainly beats the usual trestle tables, dodgy chairs and hope-for-the-best approach to set storage, so let's not cavil that there’s nowhere much to rest the elbows, and forbear to suggest that next time, please, get a players' focus group to advise on the colour scheme.

Duchamp was, of course, in the thick of it at the Levy show. He knew a thing or two about chess tables having built in 1919 the "Buenos Aires" travelling board (to go with his own-design set) a fold-up mobile job, for use among the gauchos of Argentina during his respite from the inconveniences of post-war USA. As a serious player he designed-in clocks and space enough for score sheets, refreshments, fag-ash - so last century - and several pairs of elbows, but style-wise his table was uncharacteristically restrained – so it wouldn't distract the players maybe or, more crucially, frighten the horses.


For The Imagery Duchamp broke the habit of a lifetime and left provocation to others, in chess set and table design at least; for example Isamu Noguchi, with whose creation Levy is playing at the top of this blog.


It was the hit of the show. Noguchi was from Japan, his sources were Oriental and Eastern, and his design an exuberant change from, say, the machined minimalism of Man Ray’s 1920s effort. However, looking closely, it is difficult to resist the suspicion that Noguchi allowed himself to be diverted by two signal achievements of Western culture: Sci-Fi B movies and table soccer. Perish the thought that this was the real reason for its popularity.

For musical diversion the score of John Cage's "Chess Piece" was inscribed on a chess board; thus it could be looked at, played on, and perhaps played. Or perhaps not. The sources say that "Chess Piece" wasn't publically performed at The Imagery, and not even played at all, even by Cage, even privately, ever, until recorded in 2006.


It has a beguiling simplicity, and a Middle Eastern/Iberian flavour. Although it is clearly composed by the same hand as the better known, and metallic, "Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano", also on the CD, Chess Piece inevitably inhabits a less exalted sound world compared with one coaxed from a joanna playing bits of any old iron. The final piece, also composed for The Imagery, is "Chess Serenade" by Vittorio Rieti (another of Kolty’s victims) with the subtitle "The KNIGHT serenading the QUEEN on top of the CASTLE, while the KING confers with the bishop on the subject of the PAWNS". It is elegant; like its subtitle, it is charming; and at 1 minute 28 seconds, it is brief. Chess Serenade and Chess Piece back to back would provide the soundtrack to a game of five minute blitz.

Larry List's comprehensive and authoritative essays document the original show, its second coming in The Imagery of Chess Revisited exhibition in 2005, and other twentieth century incarnations in which contemporary artists, including a clutch of YBAs (not so Young anymore British Artists) have used the chess set as the raw material for their art-works. You can see them here and maybe read something half-way coherent about them if and when Exhibitionism is ever Revisited.





Notes

1. The Imagery of Chess Revisited. Larry List (ed). George Braziller, New York, 2005: essay by Larry List, "The Imagery of Chess Revisited".
Skáklist/32 pieces: The Art of Chess. Mark Sanders (ed). Reykjavik Art Museum, 2009: essay by Larry List, "New Forms for a New Era".

The list of exhibitions is: Levy Gallery*, New York 1944/5; Somerset House, London 2003; Noguchi Museum, New York 2005*; Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York 2005; The Menil Collection, Texas 2006*; Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Moscow, 2006; Sebastian Guinness Gallery, Dublin 2008; Reykjavik Art Museum, 2009.

* denotes "The Imagery of Chess/Revisited" series. The others are editions of "The Art of Chess" organised by Mark Sanders and Julia Royce.

2. Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism. Tate Modern, London 2009. The catalogue shows a design drawing for the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of "Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes" which has the board the wrong way round. The Tate website had the original Rodchenko design drawing where he got it right.

3. John Cage, The Works for Piano 7. Performed by Margaret Leng Tan. Mode Records, USA., 2006. It comes with a liner note by the pianist on both chess pieces. See also Paul B. Franklin and Lowell Cross "Composing Chess" in List (2005) op cit.