The Body
Putting delegates at their ease...
The commingling of bodies at international conferences, and the riot of opportunities it presented for social faux pas, was the stuff of political artists' dreams. Caricaturist Emery Kelen made a career out of them, depicting clashes and contrasts of political figures in Geneva, Berlin and London. From 1927 the New Zealand cartoonist David Low established his name via the cartoon strips of the Evening Standard, rising to fame in the mid-1930s for his depictions of the personalities and policies of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and other leaders of his times. Here he satirises the perils of imperial hospitality, with British politicians unable to resist the allure of Round Table delegates' eastern bodies, to devastating effect: complimenting the Maharajas of Patiala and Bikaner on their hair; misreading Indian clothing (confusing Kashmere and cashmere, Burmese dress for pyjamas); and joking with the Muslim Aga Khan about bishops and barmaids. Readers of the Evening Standard would have been familiar with many of the Indians depicted here. They were heavily featured in the newspaper’s gossip column, ‘Echoes of the Town’, which reported on everything from the triumph of the Aga Khan’s horses at the races, the Maharaja of Bikaner’s dining and dancing, to the spending habits of the Maharaja of Patiala.
Further information:
For more of Low’s cartoons see: http://www.original-political-cartoon.com/cartoon-gallery/artists/low-sir-david-1891-1963/ and https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-david-low-1529
For the British Cartoon Archive entry see: https://archive.cartoons.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=DL0457
For Emery Kelen’s caricatures of the attendees of the Round Table Conference, see https://ttandm4h.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/indian-independence-cartoons-by-emery-kelen/
The Mahatma and Downing Street
For Mahatma ('Great Soul') Gandhi, bodies and politics were inseparable. He insisted that Indians boycott foreign cloth and spin their own, providing a self-made uniform for his followers and a self-made time (at the spinning wheel) of bodily discipline and contemplation. This discipline was expected to spill over into the everyday habit of his followers. They were to forsake alcohol, meat, drugs and sexual intercourse, unless for the purpose of reproduction. While ideologically poles apart from other Indian mass voluntary organisations of the time, such as the Indian Boy Scouts or the burgeoning Hindu and Muslim organisations, all of these movements facilitated the filtering of politics into people’s everyday lives through encouraging certain types of bodily practice. When travelling, Gandhi inserted his body of difference into the formal spaces of internationalism. His assistant Mirabehn would prepare his special food for him wherever he travelled. Blanket media coverage (see this example from the Pathé Gazette) reported him as an ascetic in a loincloth (he was neither). His refusal to bow to the weather or to social convention earned him the grudging respect of his hosts, whether at the Ritz hotel, Downing Street or Buckingham Palace, where tea party clothing protocol was set aside for Gandhi alone. In the event it was, reports suggested, George V who attempted to provoke Gandhi into an argument, which the latter refused.
Further information:
For a brief report on Gandhi’s meeting with the King: http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cornell?a=d&d=CDS19311106.2.27
On Gandhi and homespun cloth: https://www.mkgandhi.org/swadeshi_khadi/khadi.htm
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey, known as the ‘Negro Moses’, was a leading Pan-African figure, famous for his role in establishing the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). During the 1920s the UNIA’s international conventions in New York City, characterised by elaborate ceremonial displays and marches, attracted over 100,000 people. Through a politics of dress and comportment, Garvey utilised the space of the body to project his own distinctive vision of black internationalism, most associated with the Back-to-Africa movement. The striking dark blue military uniforms of the UNIA’s Universal African Legion, and Garvey’s own purple and gold uniform with a feathered helmet, may to contemporary eyes seem flamboyant but encapsulated a global vision of racial pride, dignity and distinction which were largely absent in popular representations in black life.
Further information:
Ayanna Gillian (2005) “Garvey's Legacy in Context: Colourism, Black Movements and African Nationalism” Race and History (17 August), http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/2005/1708.html
Robert A. Hill, “Marcus Garvey, ‘The Negro Moses’”, Africana Age: African and African Diasporan Transformations in the 20th Century, http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-garvey.html
“Marcus Garvey” (2011), Great Lives, series 23, episode 9, BBC Radio 4: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y2d8c
Erich Salomon, 'King of the Indiscreet'
By 1931, Erich Salomon had acquired a reputation for capturing candid photographs of politics in action. Indeed, the very term ‘candid camera’ was invented (by the London Graphic) to describe his shots, while Salomon himself invented a new name for his job: photojournalist. While other photographers would take laboriously set up posed portraits with heavy equipment and startling flashes, Salomon used a lightweight Ermanox camera to capture the unguarded expressions and postures of his subjects. His intrusions were not always welcomed, but Salomon was adept at using subterfuge to infiltrate closed venues, dressing as a diplomat with his camera disguised in a bowler hat, briefcase or pile of hollowed-out books. This photo depicts a July 1931 Franco-German banquet at the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, with the French Foreign Minister (and renowned orator and advocate of peace and unity) Aristide Briand holding court. Briand, sure that the Salomon had found a way in despite a ban on press photographers, delightedly points Salomon out to his companions, exclaiming ‘Ah, le voilà! Le roi des indiscrets!’ (‘Ah, there he is! The king of the indiscreet!’), just as Salomon presses his shutter release.
Further information:
Christopher Benfey (2015) “The Unguarded Moment” The New York Review of Books (9 Sep), https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/09/09/unguarded-moment-erich-salomon/
Online edition of Erich Salomon (1931) Berühmte Zeitgenossen in unbewachten Augenblicken (‘Famous Contemporaries in Unguarded Moments’) (Stuttgart: J. Engelhorns Nachf.) available at: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/beruhmte-zeitgenossen-in-unbewachten-augenblicken-8532/1
Many of Salomon’s photographs are available to view at the Berlinische Galerie (https://www.berlinischegalerie.de/en/collection/collection-online/erich-salomon-online/) and the International Center of Photography (https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/erich-salomon)
Albert Einstein
As well as being one of the best known scientists of his day, Albert Einstein was also a politically active public intellectual, consistently extolling the virtues of pacifism and internationalism, and a member of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. Here, he and his fellow Nobel Prize-winning scientist Max Planck are sat either side of the British Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald at a reception given by the German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning at the Reich chancellery in Berlin in July 1931 (MacDonald also attended a meeting of the ‘German-English Society’ at the Kaiserhof on this trip). While their positioning together tell us of Brüning’s wish to charm his guest-of-honour MacDonald, the animated discussion between MacDonald and Einstein speaks of a genuine connection between the men. Naturally, Erich Salomon was there to capture the scene. Two years later, in 1933, Einstein’s Jewish background forced him to emigrate to the US upon the rise of the Nazi party to power, his renown as a public figure compounding rather than mitigating his situation in Germany.
Further information:
On Einstein’s politics, celebrity and Jewishness: Matthew Francis (2017) “How Albert Einstein Used His Fame to Denounce American Racism” (3 March), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-celebrity-scientist-albert-einstein-used-fame-denounce-american-racism-180962356/
On Einstein’s internationalism: Brandon E. Weber (2016) “We Need Albert Einstein's Political Ideas Now More than Ever”, big think (17 October), https://bigthink.com/brandon-weber/book-review-einstein-and-twentieth-century-politics-a-salutary-moral-influence
On Einstein’s friendship with another prominent Briton, his equal in celebrity: Claire Cock-Starkey (2018) “The Unlikely Friendship Between Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin” Mental Floss (26 February), http://mentalfloss.com/article/516452/when-albert-einstein-met-charlie-chaplin