Hastings pier: the strange appeal of a ruined structure

Travelling by bus from Rye to Hastings, I was surprised to           see –  as the promenade came into view – the bare superstructure of Hastings pier (destroyed by fire in October, 2010). I say ‘surprised’ because although I was perfectly aware of the pier’s ‘fate’, I had only seen photographs of the fire and its aftermath – and no photograph ever quite prepares you for the immediacy of anything you see with your own eyes. I also say ‘surprised’ because the pier as a bare iron structure – stripped of its perfectly hideous ‘pavilion topping’ – has an aesthetic appeal (for me at least) which was quite unexpected; and I realise that my original comment – that the pier had been ‘tragically destroyed’ – was perhaps an ‘expected’ reaction, rather than something that I truly felt. If anything, I perhaps experienced a very mild sense of sadness that such a prominent feature of my childhood was no more. After all, the pier had been in a state of desuetude for years; it was closed, as an unsafe structure; nobody seems to have known what to do with it; and I would be surprised if anyone now has a viable plan. (It is true that in Weston–super–Mare – following the total destruction, again by fire, of the pier in 2008 – a combination of determination, will, imagination, and multi–million finance worked to such effect that a new pier was opened in 2010. However, it is hard not to imagine that this points to the difference between a rich and a poor borough.)

How to account though for the appeal of the pier as a structural ruin? Well, it is just so much more interesting now! (And if you think I'm alone in feeling this, then it was also the reaction of a German woman I met taking photographs of the pier, and of senior citizen I got into conversation with on the promenade.) The following passage, from Ruskin’s The Elements of Drawing, should help to explicate the feelings that at least some have:

    122. (2.) Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw, and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy–looking things as much as possible; for instance you cannot have a more difficult or profitless study than a newly painted Thames wherry, nor a better study than an old empty coal–barge, lying ashore at low tide: in general, everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to draw. 

This reminds me that when – at Hastings School of Art – we were sent out to draw the pier, it   was the underside structure that we concentrated on; and had anyone returned with a conventional ‘broadside’ view they would have been laughed into embarrassment – and quite right too! Few were into kitsch at that time (1960).  

I think that it is possible to further illustrate Ruskin’s point by considering Constable’s masterpiece, Chain Pier, Brighton, 1826–1827. Here the pier itself is a fine horizontal structure – sectioned by four suspension towers – to set against the ever restless environment in which it was ‘grounded’. More to the point, consider the clutter and disarray of the fishing tackle and gear to the left of the painting. Some would describe this as an unsightly mess (were they to see it in actuality and not in Constable’s depiction): a despoliation of the beach. But what a loss to the aesthetic pleasure of the painting had this been ‘cleared’ away!  And how dull would be the beach! And then the yellow ochre sail is masterly: it has a certain domination within the composition that is just right; it has a grandeur that seems to cock a snoop at all the fine promenade hotels and residential quarters – rough material though it may be; and its colour – while echoing that of the beach and promenade – is just that much brighter and fuller. (It is very likely that yellow ochre was the only yellow used by Constable in this painting, because there were at this time no other yellows available that were light–fast and permanent. Constable was more careful in this respect than Turner, who often used the unreliable Prussian blue which in many of his paintings has turned into a reddish–brown. Permanent colours are now available as iron ores, replacing the earth colours; and cadmiums for bright reds and yellows. “Sediments of metals”, as might be said.)

I should say, that had Hastings pier been open at the time of the fire, and people killed in the conflagration, I would have felt that the word ‘tragedy’ would have been entirely appropriate; and, out of respect for those killed I would not have photographed what effectively would have been a funeral pyre or cremation site.