Patrick Comerford
I was recalling yesterday the benefits of having my head in the air while I am walking on the streets of London, and contrasting the benefits of seeing art above on the walls and buildings with the risks of tripping and falling on the street below.
It had been many years since I had walked through Carnaby Street, but Charlotte and I were there last week and we took time to enjoy the ‘Spirit of Soho’, a mural on the corner of Broadwick Street and Carnaby Street.
Towering over the whole scene is a woman in an outstretched skirt that becomes all that makes Soho so full of life. This bright, colourful mural shows Soho, bordered by the shops of Oxford Street and Regent Street with the theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue bisecting it, and China Town in the bottom south-east corner.
There are tributes to the Soho of yesterday and today with a mixture the old and the new, from Ronnie Scott’s and the Gay Hussar to chain restaurants and coffee shops.
Soho was a green hunting ground favoured by royalty and the aristocracy in the 16th and 17th centuries – Soho either gave its name to or took its name from the hunting cry ‘Soho’. The hunting grounds gave way in the 18th century to grand houses that hosted parties for the fashionable and the elite in London society.
As migrants moved in, Soho was transformed with workshops and restaurants and becoming a creative hub for poets, writers, artists, designers, jewellers, and musicians – and the mural pays tribute to all of them.
The mural is on a gable end at on a street corner and faces onto Broadwick Street, a narrow street. It is filled with activity but because of its location, I had to look at it from close range and from a number of angles in an effort to see everything crowded into this creative composition.
Crowning the mural is Saint Anne, who gives her name to Saint Anne’s Church in Dean Street, Soho. The Spirit of Soho has a distracted expression on her face, with a dragon entangled in her tresses and a street parade dancing down her arm, and her skirts are open, as if to let a bustle of activity tumble onto the street below.
The flame-haired Saint Anne holds out her skirt to give shape to a map of Soho, with its streets and lanes and their landmarks spreading out beneath her. Crowded together under the fruit-laden hem of her skirt is an eclectic collection of some of the musicians, craftsmen, writers and other creative people who have lived or worked in the area.
Shaftesbury Avenue and the theatres along it can be seen on her skirt, there too is Oxford Street, and one whole corner contains China Town, including the pagoda and Lee Fung supermarket. At the west fringe stands Liberty’s department store with its Tudor-style timber frame.
There is a host of pubs, restaurants and coffee shops and an overflowing abundance of fruit and vegetables. The books and magazines woven into her skirt pay tribute to the writing and publishing industries in Soho. Here too are film makers, clothes traders, recording studios and the makers of musical instrument. Dotted around are dogs and hares, harking back to the time when Soho was a royal hunting ground in the 16th and 17th centuries.
At the bottom of the mural, a huddle of notable Soho residents and clientele includes Karl Marx (1818-1883), reading Das Kapital, behind Mozart’s shoulder, and the artist William Blake (1757-1827).
Marx lived in Dean Street in the 1850s with his family, above what became the Quo Vadis restaurant. During his time in Soho, Marx and his wife suffered the death of three of their infant children. He wrote his proposal for the Communist Manifesto in a room above the Red Lion on Great Windmill Street.
The actress and opera singer Teresa Cornelys (1723-1797) is depicted winking at her former lover, the Italian playboy Casanova (1725-1798), who in turn blows her a kiss. Her parties in the mid-1700s at her home, Carlisle House in Soho Square, were legendary, and she had a daughter Sophia during her affair with Casanova.
To the left and right are six scenes depicting cultural life in Soho. The three panels on the left feature a film animator in his studio, believed to be the late Bob Godfrey, the fashion trade, and international restaurants. The three on the right show the Palladium, Carnaby Street and Ronnie Scott’s, replete with Ronnie Scott, jazz musician George Melly (1926-2007), the poet Welsh Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) and the Irish writer Brendan Behan (1923-1964).
A green border at the bottom carries small images of Soho parish school, a dog and hare standing on a Union Jack, a Willow Pattern dish, and Soho Street Theatre. Blue plaques name the sponsors and some of the traditional trades of Soho.
The mural was created by the Soho community in 1991 and was co-ordinated by the Free Form Arts Trust, who designed and executed the work, and Alternative Arts, who co-ordinated the workshops and public programme that were part of the project.
The mural was restored in 2006 by Shaftesbury PLC and the Soho Society, and the clock was reactivated by the Lord Mayor of Westminster. Now, when the clock strikes the hour, it looks as though Karl Marx is sipping a can of Coca-Cola while Theresa Cornelys winks at Casanova and he blows kisses back to her.
In among the streets of Soho I also spotted Groucho Marx of the Marx brothers, an allusion to the Groucho Club on Dean Street … so this is a work of street art that brings us through the streets of Soho, not only from Casanova to Brendan Behan but also from Karl Marx to Groucho Mark.
• The Spirit of Soho is on the Berwick Street side of 9 Carnaby Street, Soho, London W1F 9PB. The nearest stations are Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus.
