‘Nostalghia’ and Charleston farmhouse

*A Polaroid photograph by Andrei Tarkovsky*

Andrei Tarkovsky often said that he was interested in the qualities inherent in time, and the final scene in his masterful film ‘Nostalghia’ makes the point dramatically. At the end of the story, which tells of a Russian writer who travels to Italy to explore the life of an 18th century serf composer, Pavel Sosnovsky, whose nostalgia for Russia drove him to suicide, there is a scene, a single take, lasting about nine minutes, which shows the protagonist trying to cross a long drained pool without allowing his lighted candle to be extinguished. According to Oleg Yankovsky, who played the part of Gorchakov, the writer, Tarkovsky told him that he intended to encompass an entire human life, from birth to death, in one shot, without any editing or trickery. ‘Remember’, said Tarkovsky, ’the candles in Orthodox churches, how they flicker, how they represent the very essence of things’.

In 1979, Tarkovsky went to Italy to scout for locations and prepare for the making of ‘Nostalghia’, taking with him the Polaroid camera that he had recently come to enjoy. Polaroid photos are usually informal and spontaneous, and while some of Tarkovsky’s images are memorable, others are typically unremarkable, of interest mainly because of their association with him. The camera’s key characteristics, which are immediacy and ease of use, nevertheless did little to inhibit the film-maker’s sensibility; somehow the Polaroid prints’ idiosyncratic colour, which tends to be saturated but diffused, helped to create a mood of mystery, nostalgia, and vulnerability, all within the confines of their small, square, white-bordered format. Tarkovsky’s images were distanced, reticent, and reflective, with both nature and subjects stilled. He seems to have had a preference for the quieter times of the day, when nothing is rushed or harshly lit.

Two years later, in 1981, at Charleston farmhouse in Sussex, Kim Marsland took a series of photographs that had much the same feeling and mood. Charleston’s last inhabitants were part of the Bloomsbury Group, mainly Vanessa Bell, her family, and Duncan Grant, and they all had either left or died. The Charleston Trust was yet to take over, and it was a house decayed by time, but still full of character. Kim Marsland, who was then a student at Maidstone College of Art, had written to the caretaker to ask if she could visit the house, and her photos reflect the period prior to Charleston’s restoration, before it had become well-known and its decorative style internationally recognised. She describes the place lyrically in a small book on the subject; it was dreamlike, a place apart, you couldn’t hear cars, and the sky was full of birdsong. Marsland had been attracted to the house because she liked Vanessa Bell’s work, with its unusual colour combinations and chalkiness of paint; Italian frescoes, such as Piero della Francesca’s ‘Madonna del Parto’, which plays a key part in Tarkovsky’s ‘Nostalghia’, had inspired Bell and Grant; their flattened perspective and soft earth colours were echoed in Charleston’s painted murals and furnishings. Wallpaper, doors, tiles, and furniture had been decorated, and the house was full of handmade textiles, rugs, and ceramics. By the time Marsland saw it, however, the house was down-at-heel, worn, and neglected; the garden was unkempt, its plants left to scramble and fend for themselves.

Grant’s studio was a large, airy room and the walls were distressed and faded, as Marsland described it. Two large armchairs faced inwards, draped with hand-knitted throws and misshapen cushions. Behind stood a large screen decorated with semi-abstract figures. The sun lit up hand-thrown pots, postcards, books and a striking bust of Virginia Woolf. Old photographs covered every surface. In the library she found more dusty volumes unevenly placed on simple, painted bookcases; there were mismatched chairs and rugs that were partly threadbare. Below the window was a mural of the household’s lurcher, grey against a burnt ochre background; the paint was distressed and discoloured in places, in obvious need of restoration, but the picture had a melancholy grace. Upstairs, the young art student was struck by Grant’s dressing-room, where his dusty shoes were propped neatly against a faded wall; old tins, boxes and glass bottles clustered on a window sill. Then she discovered Vanessa Bell’s studio, abandoned after her death twenty years before. The room was damp, the wallpaper was flaking off the walls, and there were visible signs of a leaking roof. A wooden easel covered in paint dominated the room, and behind it stood a large stretched canvas, one of many stacked against the walls, which depicted a man leaning against an oak tree with a shotgun in the crook of his arm.

‘The house wants doing up - and the wallpapers are awful’, Virginia Woolf wrote to her sister, Vanessa Bell, during World War I, when she first visited Charleston. The bathwater was cold, and the tenants had given animals the run of the rooms, but the garden, which comprised a pond, fruit trees, and vegetables, was charming. Bell, who had been looking for a place to live outside London, moved there in 1916, bringing with her Duncan Grant, her lover, as well as Grant’s own lover, David Garnett, and the two children by her husband, Clive, who was living elsewhere. Work on nearby farms enabled the two men, both conscientious objectors, to avoid conscription, and together the group transformed the place into a secluded retreat from the outside world, rather like the one imagined by Virginia Woolf for her character Orlando, who ‘naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone’, as a recent writer has remarked.

A decade after Marsland’s first visit, everything had been repaired and renovated, and since then it has been exhaustively written about and photographed. On her return she said the atmosphere was much the same, but this was perhaps overly generous. When I went there not long afterwards, Charleston was still beguiling, but like most such places open to the public, it felt self-conscious. It has become even more so since then, to judge by current images, and the muted resonance of Kim Marsland’s nostalgic images is hard to find. The place has been transformed; Charleston’s casual bohemian character - at least as I imagine it - has gone, replaced by something very agreeable, more respectable, and perhaps a little too tasteful.

For further exploration:

An interesting Tarkovsky website: http://nostalghia.com/index.html

‘Nostalghia’ - final scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Dp6EdFRHo

Tarkovsky’s Polaroids: https://www.bonhams.com/auction/23936/nostalgia-before-and-after-a-collection-of-unique-polaroids-by-andrey-tarkovsky/

Kim Marsland’s book on Charleston: https://blog.rowleygallery.co.uk/charleston-farmhouse-1981/

Charleston today: https://bibleofbritishtaste.com/charleston-farmhouse-needs-you

and: https://www.charleston.org.uk/

Listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTfJTcjyK0U

Image on index page: a still from ‘Nostalghia’