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| Growing old artistically: five role models for women | |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| I was very disappointed yesterday to read that Kazuo Ishiguro is of the view that most authors reach their peak before they turn 45. This is not what I want to hear. I want to hear that there is more to come and better, more dazzling concepts and descriptive tours de force to look forward to. Ishiguro also suggested that, as artists age, their output can be categorised according to three specific types – the Neil Young (who carries on enthusiastically doing more of the same), the Philip Roth (who distills his earlier work to an elegant minimalism) or the Bob Dylan model (who creates work that embraces age). | I was very disappointed yesterday to read that Kazuo Ishiguro is of the view that most authors reach their peak before they turn 45. This is not what I want to hear. I want to hear that there is more to come and better, more dazzling concepts and descriptive tours de force to look forward to. Ishiguro also suggested that, as artists age, their output can be categorised according to three specific types – the Neil Young (who carries on enthusiastically doing more of the same), the Philip Roth (who distills his earlier work to an elegant minimalism) or the Bob Dylan model (who creates work that embraces age). |
| Ishiguro seems to be saying that an unconscious inclination to conform, and to repeat your earlier work, takes over for many artists. To me this undermines the basic concept of creativity, a bit like saying the opposite of “the best is yet to come”. But I refuse to lose hope, because the simple fact that his triumvirate of creative brains are exclusively male seems to fatally disrupt his theory. Where are the equally awesome older women? If we’re going to insist on genderising things (how quaint) I will, if I may, have a go at redressing the balance and suggest a few of my own models for being creative as you age. | Ishiguro seems to be saying that an unconscious inclination to conform, and to repeat your earlier work, takes over for many artists. To me this undermines the basic concept of creativity, a bit like saying the opposite of “the best is yet to come”. But I refuse to lose hope, because the simple fact that his triumvirate of creative brains are exclusively male seems to fatally disrupt his theory. Where are the equally awesome older women? If we’re going to insist on genderising things (how quaint) I will, if I may, have a go at redressing the balance and suggest a few of my own models for being creative as you age. |
| Related: Readers' favourite books by women | Related: Readers' favourite books by women |
| Mary Wesley: the ‘life really starts in your eighth decade’ model | Mary Wesley: the ‘life really starts in your eighth decade’ model |
| Wesley published her first novel, Jumping the Queue, when she was 71 and went on to write a sparkling sequence of bestsellers including The Camomile Lawn and Not That Sort of Girl. She clearly doesn’t fit into any of Ishiguro’s categories and demonstrates an almost insulting lack of respect for his confession that “his imagination will not work as fast as it used to”. More importantly, she provides a glimmer of hope for others who arrive late to their vocation. | Wesley published her first novel, Jumping the Queue, when she was 71 and went on to write a sparkling sequence of bestsellers including The Camomile Lawn and Not That Sort of Girl. She clearly doesn’t fit into any of Ishiguro’s categories and demonstrates an almost insulting lack of respect for his confession that “his imagination will not work as fast as it used to”. More importantly, she provides a glimmer of hope for others who arrive late to their vocation. |
| Hilary Mantel: the ‘she just gets better with age’ model | Hilary Mantel: the ‘she just gets better with age’ model |
| When I picked up my first Hilary Mantel – A Place of Greater Safety – I couldn’t put the damn thing down and my life ceased entirely until I’d turned the last tear-stained page. It remains the best book I have ever read on the French revolution, and that includes Dickens. Do you think Mantel – at 62 and at the height of her powers – senses the “little bit of decline” Ishiguro sees in some older artists? Given the Wolf Hall trilogy, the final instalment of which is yet to come, I’d suggest not. | When I picked up my first Hilary Mantel – A Place of Greater Safety – I couldn’t put the damn thing down and my life ceased entirely until I’d turned the last tear-stained page. It remains the best book I have ever read on the French revolution, and that includes Dickens. Do you think Mantel – at 62 and at the height of her powers – senses the “little bit of decline” Ishiguro sees in some older artists? Given the Wolf Hall trilogy, the final instalment of which is yet to come, I’d suggest not. |
| Judi Dench and Maggie Smith: the ‘there ain’t nothing like a dame’ model | Judi Dench and Maggie Smith: the ‘there ain’t nothing like a dame’ model |
| Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith have distilled and refined what they do to such an elevated level it leaves we mere mortals almost breathless with admiration. Not that you will ever see anything as vulgar as them “doing” anything. It is apparently effortless. Both have suffered the health problems that sometimes accompany advancing years but neither have felt compelled to offer any sort of explanation or excuse, and rightly so. Dame Judi trod the boards on election night in The Vote at the Donmar Warehouse in London, finding subtle ways to circumnavigate the difficulties presented by macular degeneration. Not that you’d notice. There is, above all, no sense with these two that they should be any less ambitious or playfully creative than they ever were. | Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith have distilled and refined what they do to such an elevated level it leaves we mere mortals almost breathless with admiration. Not that you will ever see anything as vulgar as them “doing” anything. It is apparently effortless. Both have suffered the health problems that sometimes accompany advancing years but neither have felt compelled to offer any sort of explanation or excuse, and rightly so. Dame Judi trod the boards on election night in The Vote at the Donmar Warehouse in London, finding subtle ways to circumnavigate the difficulties presented by macular degeneration. Not that you’d notice. There is, above all, no sense with these two that they should be any less ambitious or playfully creative than they ever were. |
| Alessandra Ferri: the ‘go away then plunge right back in’ model | Alessandra Ferri: the ‘go away then plunge right back in’ model |
| While we’re on the subject of the stage, I notice (with the kind of delight I normally reserve for a well-presented macaroon) that Alessandra Ferri (52) has returned to the stage at the Royal Opera House and is working with Wayne McGregor on Woolf Works, a new three-act ballet about the life and work of Virginia Woolf. This is no easy task, either physically or mentally. Ferri gave up dance altogether eight years ago and stepped right away from it, but after a year or so said that she felt “as if I wasn’t myself, as if there was something missing”. I wonder how it would play out if you faced another few decades without the very thing that makes you feel alive? Actually, I don’t. It would be miserable. | While we’re on the subject of the stage, I notice (with the kind of delight I normally reserve for a well-presented macaroon) that Alessandra Ferri (52) has returned to the stage at the Royal Opera House and is working with Wayne McGregor on Woolf Works, a new three-act ballet about the life and work of Virginia Woolf. This is no easy task, either physically or mentally. Ferri gave up dance altogether eight years ago and stepped right away from it, but after a year or so said that she felt “as if I wasn’t myself, as if there was something missing”. I wonder how it would play out if you faced another few decades without the very thing that makes you feel alive? Actually, I don’t. It would be miserable. |
| When women reach that point in our lives when we can focus on ourselves alone we tend to flourish, whatever our age | When women reach that point in our lives when we can focus on ourselves alone we tend to flourish, whatever our age |
| Sylvie Guillem: the ‘I’m brilliant at what I do – and I’ll be brilliant at whatever I do next’ model | Sylvie Guillem: the ‘I’m brilliant at what I do – and I’ll be brilliant at whatever I do next’ model |
| A counterpoint to Ferri, Sylvie Guillem is currently touring with a farewell programme as she works towards retirement at 50 – not that this heralds a new interest in crown green bowling, just a change of direction. Still, as Wayne McGregor said in a recent interview for Vogue, “We still have this very particular idea about the age at which people should dance.” He’s right, of course. Personally I’d love to see one of Ishiguro’s models at work here, with Guillem dancing through the next decades and delivering, as Bob Dylan does, “a rather gorgeous mix of regret and longing and fond memories”. Older people can do that, younger people can’t – or at least not in the same way. | A counterpoint to Ferri, Sylvie Guillem is currently touring with a farewell programme as she works towards retirement at 50 – not that this heralds a new interest in crown green bowling, just a change of direction. Still, as Wayne McGregor said in a recent interview for Vogue, “We still have this very particular idea about the age at which people should dance.” He’s right, of course. Personally I’d love to see one of Ishiguro’s models at work here, with Guillem dancing through the next decades and delivering, as Bob Dylan does, “a rather gorgeous mix of regret and longing and fond memories”. Older people can do that, younger people can’t – or at least not in the same way. |
| We should always be interested in hearing the views of others and should not be afraid to express our own. So here’s what I think: while Kazuo Ishiguro has an interesting point of view, it is nonetheless a fairly negative one, with more than a hint that when we reach a certain age we begin to think along well-trodden neural pathways. That may be the case for men – which he implies with his own selection of examples. What is interesting is that in my alternative list there is no equivalent of Ishiguro’s Neil Young model, the one who “keeps on doing exactly what you always did with great enthusiasm”. Women, with our lives that encompass so many different and difficult roles and obligations, often learn to adapt to changing circumstances supremely well and we reinvent ourselves many times over in the course of a lifetime to a greater or lesser degree. We portion out our energies according to need, and our own need is very often the last we consider. When we reach that point in our lives when we can focus on ourselves alone we tend to flourish, whatever our age. | We should always be interested in hearing the views of others and should not be afraid to express our own. So here’s what I think: while Kazuo Ishiguro has an interesting point of view, it is nonetheless a fairly negative one, with more than a hint that when we reach a certain age we begin to think along well-trodden neural pathways. That may be the case for men – which he implies with his own selection of examples. What is interesting is that in my alternative list there is no equivalent of Ishiguro’s Neil Young model, the one who “keeps on doing exactly what you always did with great enthusiasm”. Women, with our lives that encompass so many different and difficult roles and obligations, often learn to adapt to changing circumstances supremely well and we reinvent ourselves many times over in the course of a lifetime to a greater or lesser degree. We portion out our energies according to need, and our own need is very often the last we consider. When we reach that point in our lives when we can focus on ourselves alone we tend to flourish, whatever our age. |
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