Luke's Thought of the Month - October 2025

Context is everything and everything has context.

There has always been a common misconception that the creative world is populated by creative geniuses (of varying levels) who produce fully formed works of art out of thin air. Little consideration is given to the social and economic landscapes that created the thought processes and inspiration behind what the creative is saying. To me, the social landscape of any given time is entirely reflected in the creative output.

The nihilistic peacocking of punk is a direct reflection of the social and economic hardships of the 1970s, it was also a backlash against the Hippie movement. What immediately followed the hard masculine punk was the effeminate glamour of the new romantic movement deliberately blurring gender and this reflected the newfound affluence of the 1980s.

These two momentary and micro examples are entirely mirrored in the Tudor and Jacobean courts. The male attire became increasingly effeminate – doublet, hose, high heels, earrings, brocades, silks, elaborate hairstyles and beards – the further they drew away from the lengthy civil war that was the Wars of the Roses. The catastrophe of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s led to a 1980s “Loadsamoney” vulgarity and while the effeminate attire was an outward display of wealth it also masked a venal toxic masculinity.

Where fashion is influenced by social or world events then so is the broader creative world.

Societal upheaval has a lasting impact on societal norms. After the previously unimaginable death toll of the First World War followed by the Spanish Flu epidemic, it is not surprising that there was a huge uplift in seances and spiritualism in a desperate bid to contact those who had died.

While that is an understandable response to a major trauma, the further one goes back in history there are similar examples but, in some ways, they feel less accessible or understandable solely because the language of the past can seem like a foreign tongue.

Perhaps the best example of this, as in so many other ways, is Shakespeare. Macbeth was first performed 9 months after Guido Fawkes attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and it is very significant as a work of propaganda. The Weird Sisters tell Macbeth that he will be King but that none of his descendants will be kings, Banquo the dignified and noble hero of the play is told that he will not be King, but his descendants will be. Effectively Shakespeare is playing to the vanity of his patron by saying that Banquo, not Macbeth, is James I’s ancestor.

Even more remarkable is Hamlet for its audacity. Hamlet is not King because he is illegitimate. His mother has married his father’s brother. The significance of this is that Henry VIII wanted his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled because she had been his brother’s wife – this was the technicality he sought so he could marry Ann Boleyn, Elizabeth I’s mother. Ann Boleyn was visibly pregnant at her wedding to Henry VIII (the suggestion in Hamlet being that Elizabeth is illegitimate both in reality and as sovereign). The audience would have immediately understood the parallels, and it was stunningly brave or foolhardy of Shakespeare to do this while Elizabeth was still on the throne. This again shows that whatever surrounds you in life will be reflected in your creative output.

So much of art is propaganda, whether to the benefit of the State or the Church. Both institutions realised this during the Renaissance and became patrons of the arts – in England it was primarily the theatre and in Rome it was painting, sculpture and architecture. Being the patrons they got to call the tune. But it does make me wonder what Michelangelo or Raphael would have painted if the Church had not been their patron.

In the last thirty years the world has suffered major trauma – 9/11, wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, the Financial Crash, the Arab Spring, Covid, Ukraine, Gaza and so many other localised events such as Brexit that have far reaching societal impact. Yet strangely I cannot discern a creative reflection of these traumas. The overriding creative output in the worlds of interiors and fashion has been “understatement” which suggests no statement at all.

There was a time when the creative world challenged, had opinions, forced us to think differently and not follow the herd. They were dismissed throughout history by the Establishment as “subversives” but often had astonishing prescience which undermined staid Establishment lines of thought and had much more impact on society than most government bills.

I am bewildered by this current creative silence in its muted tones.

We have the context; we need to find the voice.