Another in our continuing series of ‘Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer’ – this time back to the V&A South Kensington and the film that focuses on the antique dealer M. Harris & Sons – you can see the final version of the film HERE.
As usual, we had a lot more to say about the well-known antique dealer Moss Harris than we could fit into the films. For example, we had dozens and dozens of images of the antique shops of M. Harris & Sons but, as we’ve stated several times in the ‘Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer’ blog posts, we just did not have the space to add more images into the films (without making the images just a blur!). But we thought you might still like to see just a few of the images we didn’t use; so here are some more M. Harris & Sons images from our dealer archives. Below are some fascinating photographs of a display of antique chairs at the Moss Harris’ shop in St. James’s Street, London in 1938. This display, showing chairs dating from the early 17th century to the early 19th century, was part of a special exhibition staged by M. Harris & Sons celebrating the success of the publication of their book, The English Chair (1937).
The display at M. Harris & Sons in 1938 has striking similarities with the more recent display of chairs in the redesign of the furniture galleries at the V&A Museum in London – the Dr. Susan Weber Gallery, designed by Nord Architects and curated by Nick Humphrey and Leela Meinertas, which was opened in 2011 (see below). I guess these similarities are just a further reminder of how symbiotic the relationship is between the museum and the market. (c.f. The SOLD! exhibition at The Bowes Museum in 2019)
Interesting though these observations might be, what readers of the Blog seem to be interested in, and what makes really makes these ‘Behind the Scenes’ blog posts work, is for us to tell you a little more about how the YoD films were made and give you some insight into the processes and decisions we made during the making of the films. And so, we thought you would be interested to hear a little more about the music we used in the Year of the Dealer films, and how and why we chose it.
If you click on any of the YoD films, you will hear a short sequence of music at the start and which also appears at the closing sequence in the films as well – this is a Classical piece which we licensed for use in the films – Patrick sorted this out for us and suggested the music, which we all liked (thanks again Patrick!).
The music in the YoD films is great of course, but it was not first choice, or at least it was not exactly what we wanted in terms of general ‘tone’ for the YoD films. What we really wanted for the music was something much more edgy – something that was symptomatic of the provocation that is at the heart of the YoD project – the complex question about the relationship between ‘art’ and ‘money’. The idea we had was that we wanted a piece of music that had the kind of ‘edginess’ that would further amplify this idea. The purpose of the edginess of the music was that it would implicitly draw attention to the relationship between the symbolic value of antiques and the economic value of antiques. We were doing this anyway in the YoD films by highlighting the prices that the antiques were sold at when they ended up at the various museums (I’m sure you have noticed this!).
Anyway, we tried to get some edgy music and top of the list, for edginess and quirkiness, was the version of the song ‘Money (that’s what I want)’ by the Flying Lizards (1979) – if you don’t know the song you can watch the YouTube video and hear ‘Money’ (that’s what I want)’ HERE
‘Money (that’s what I want)’ was originally recorded by the American singer Barrett Strong (1941-2023) in 1959, but the Flying Lizards version of 1979 had just the right edginess of tone, exactly what we thought we wanted for the YoD films. We did quite a bit of investigative work in trying to work out how we would get a license for the music – we were excited to discover that David Toop, a leading academic well-known for his expertise and interest in avant-garde music, was a member of The Flying Lizards back in the 1970s. David was a visiting Professor at Leeds College of Music (so potentially quite close by) and at one stage we thought about contacting David and asking if we might be able to use a little bit of the music from the Flying Lizards version of ‘Money (that’s what I want)’ for the YoD films.
Ultimately though, we decided that it would cost too much of our limited budget, so we went for some more pragmatic (in terms of cost) and less contentious (in terms of our potential audience for the YoD films) piece of music – but I wonder what you think… ….would the YoD films be more effective with ‘I want Money….that’s what I want….’ streaming in the background in the opening and closing sequences of the YoD films?
Do look out for the next in the series of ‘Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer’.
Mark
