Minimalism

Minimalism (pronounced min-uh-muh-liz-uhm)

(1) In music, a reductive style or school of modern music utilizing only simple sonorities, rhythms, and patterns, with minimal embellishment or complexity, and characterized by protracted repetition of figurations, obsessive structural rigor, and often a pulsing, hypnotic effect.

(2) In art or architecture, a style which features spare, austere lines and avoids elaboration or embellishment.  Traditional design elements may be retained but in simplified form.

(3) In engineering and design, a non-aesthetic ethos which tends towards lightness and simplicity.

1965-1967: The construct was minimal + -ism.  Minimal is from the Latin minimum, neuter form of minimus (least, smallest), suppletive superlative of parvus, comparative minor from the primitive Indo-European smey (small, little) from which Latin also gained minuō; related to the Gothic minniza (smaller). Related also was īnfimus (lowest), but etymologists are divided on the history.  It was related also to the Ancient Greek μῑκρός (mīkrós) (little, small) and, ultimately, the English smicker.  The –ism suffix was from either the Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós), a suffix that forms abstract nouns of action, state, condition, doctrine; from stem of verbs in -ίζειν (-ízein) (from which English gained-ize), or from the related Ancient Greek suffix -ισμα (-isma) which more specifically expressed a finished act or thing done.  Aspects of the style(s) in modern art, literature, design etc long predate the emergence of the word in the 1960s.  The noun minimalist dates from 1907 in the sense of “one who advocates moderate reforms or policies" and was originally an adapted borrowing of Menshevik; as understood as "a practitioner of minimal art" it dates from 1967, the term “minimal art” being noted first in 1965.  It was an adjective from 1917 in the Russian political sense and since 1969 in reference to art.

Eye of the beholder

Much of what is described as minimalist art is, technically, representational but the concept is best understood as the abstract notion of a thing existing in and defined by its own reality with no dependencies beyond.  Literally that’s not possible but minimalist art works best if the viewer behaves as if it is.  An artist making no attempt to represent or respond to an external reality depends on the audience responding only to the object; that from which it’s created and the form it assumes.

Although strands of minimalism have been identifiable in music, painting, engineering and architecture for millennia, as a defined commodity in the art market it emerged in New York in the late 1950s and has usually been regarded as a reaction to the gestural art of earlier generations.  Minimalism ran in parallel with the forks of the conceptual art movement and produced some original work but was also burdened by some contradictions and the inherent limitation that having pursued a motif to its conclusion, all that could lie beyond were variations on the theme.  Indeed, there were critics for whom minimalism was just another phase of the abstract expressionist movement with roots in the nineteenth century.

Installation view of the exhibition Primary Structures (Younger American & British Sculptors), 27 April-12 June 1966, The Jewish Museum, New York City.

A landmark moment for the movement was the group exhibition Primary Structures, at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1966 which combined, for the first time, big spaces and pure aestheticism.  The curators didn’t use the term “minimalism” in their catalogues and it was only later the word came to be adopted to refer to an increasing number of fields, as diverse as software user interfaces and landscape architecture.  Inevitability, associated with the reductive aspects of modernism and thought something of a reaction to the exuberance of surrealism and abstract expressionism, minimalism begat the post-minimal which, being post-modernist, eschews the theories and leaves the audience to make of it what they will.

Minimalism in Engineering, the fiftieth anniversary (AC) Shelby Cobra 427: Carroll Shelby (1923-2012) defined a sports car as “a vehicle with nothing on it not designed to make it go faster”.

In 2014 Shelby announced a run of fifty Cobras to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) version in January 1965.  Offered with either fiberglass (US$120,000) or aluminum (US$180,000) bodywork and the choice of a variety of naturally aspirated big block engines with between 400 (US$50,000) and 700 horsepower (US$70,000), the greatest attraction of the Shelby-built cars was perhaps that each, despite not being “original” was eligible to be documented in the official “World Registry”, the stud book of the 365 small block (260 & 289) and 343 big block (427 & 428) Cobras built by Shelby American between 1962-1967.  As a concept, it was similar (at the engineering if not the legal level) to Jaguar “resuming production” of the XK-SS and lightweight E-Types which, for various reasons, had never been sold.  Both Jaguar and Shelby based the "resumed" production on chassis numbers allocated decades earlier but which had never reached the market (the cars either never built or destroyed prior while still in the factory).  In Jaguar's case, that was exactly what happened; Shelby had in the past been rather more inventive.

Minimalism in underwear: Lindsay Lohan in LBD (little black dress) at the General Motors Annual ten Celebrity Fashion Show, 1540 Vine Street, Hollywood, California, February 2006.

The originality issue and the cachet of having a “genuine” Shelby built car instead of a “replica” (however exact or even substantially improved on what was done in the 1960s) was well understood but Shelby himself in 1993 created a bit of a grey area by, in effect, creating “counterfeit” copies of his own cars.  What he’d done was use a loophole in the regulations of the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) by sending an undocumented request for 43 “duplicate” titles for vehicles on the basis of a list of chassis numbers dating from 1965.  In fact, although the chassis numbers had in 1965 been allocated, they had never been constructed and all the titles Shelby was obtaining were for frames fabricated in 1991-1992 by a contractor.  Unfazed, Mr Shelby, despite having apparently extended his philosophy of minimalism to include legal documents, denied any of this was misleading and said he was the victim of a smear campaign by a competitor.

Minimalism in fashion.  Rita Ora, MTV Video Music Awards, August 2014 (left) & Bella Hadid, Cannes Film Festival, May 2016 (right).  The LRD (little red dress) was a pleasing design, best suited to warmer climates and thus far, the dress of the twenty-first century and therefore the third millennium.  Both wore it well and an individual partiality to one look or the other will depend on how one likes fabric to fall. 

Bolshevik & Menshevik

Bolshevik (pronounced bohl-shuh-vik, bol-shuh-vik or buhl-shi-vyeek (Russian))

(1) A member of the more radical majority of the Social Democratic Party, 1903–1917, advocating, inter alia, the immediate and forceful seizure of power by the proletariat (in Russia and in some factions, beyond); after 1918, a member of the Russian Communist Party.

(2) In the West, historically (mostly early-mid twentieth century), a disparaging or contemptuous term used to refer to an extreme radical or revolutionary (often lowercase).  Applied loosely, it was used (even neutrally) to refer to any member of a Communist party.

(3) In the West a term, sometimes humorous, used as an adjective (often as bolshie) applied to anyone deliberately combative or uncooperative and strident or assertive in their actions or expression of view; used especially where there was a perception of behavior of attitude in conflict with socially constructed expectations (women, nuns etc).

Circa 1915: From the Russian большеви́к (bolʹševík), from большинство́ (bolʹšinstvó) (majority) (those in the majority (Majoritarians)), the construct being bólʾsh(iĭ) (larger, greater (comparative of bolʾshóĭ (large) and thus the sourced of bolʾshinstvó (majority)) + -evik (one that is (a variant of –ovik, the noun suffix)).  The adjective bol'shiy (greater), comparative of the adjective bol'shoy (big, great) is probably most familiar from the famous Bolshoi Ballet and was from the Old Church Slavonic boljiji (larger), from the primitive Indo-European root bel- (strong), source also of the Sanskrit balam (strength, force), the Greek beltion (better), the Phrygian balaios (big, fast), the Old Irish odbal (strong), the Welsh balch (proud) and the Middle Dutch, Low German & Frisian pal (strong, firm).  The popular contraction in the West (and one now remote from its party-political origins) should always be spelled bolshie.  Bolshevik & Bolshevist are nouns & adjectives, Bolshevism is a noun and Bolshevistic an adjective.  The noun plural is Bolsheviks (Bolsheviki in the Russian which is pronounced buhl-shi-vyi-kyee).

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) and bolshie woman Germaine Greer (b 1939) at the Town Bloody Hall debate between the author and a panel of feminists, 30 April 1971, The Town Hall, New York City.  Both were well chosen, Greer was the author of The Female Eunuch (1970) which remains one of feminism's seminal texts and Mailer regarded (fairly or not) as a misogynist and one who received a suspended sentence for (twice) stabbing the second (the artist Adele Morales (1925–2015)) of his six wives.

In the twentieth century, “bolshevik” was often used as a term of disparagement, often from establishment figures disturbed by challenges to the status quo, subversive types like TS Elliot (1888-1965) and James Joyce (1882-1941) both called literary bolsheviks and some painters wore “artistic bolshevik” as a badge of honor; later, there would be feminists who proudly described themselves as “bolshie women”.  Winston Churchill (1875-1968; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) abhorred communism and not infrequently referred to the new order in Moscow as the “Bolshevik baboons” and was supportive of a multi-national military intervention in the Russian Civil War (1918-1920) but was also, strategically, a realist.  His biographer recounted how he note there were:

“…nearly half a million anti-Bolshevik Russians under arms, and the Russians themselves planned to double this figure.  If we were unable to support the Russians effectively, it would be far better to take a decision now to quit and face the consequences, and tell these people to make the best terms they could with the Bolsheviks.”

So it transpired and the small foreign forces were withdrawn but he always made clear that as Minister for War, he did this out of military necessity and not any lack of conviction that the communists should have been overthrown, telling a press conference in Washington DC in 1954 that had he “…been properly supported in 1919, I think we might have strangled Bolshevism in its cradle, but everybody turned up their hands and said, ‘How shocking!’”

Menshevik (pronounced men·she·vik, men-shuh-vik or myin-shi-vyeek (Russian))

A member of the faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party opposed to the Bolsheviks; inter alia, they advocated a gradualist approach to the attainment of socialism through parliamentary government and cooperation with bourgeois parties.  By 1918, the remaining members had been absorbed into the Communist Party of Russia, formed that year.

1907: From the Russian меньшеви́к (menʹševík) from меньшинство́ (menʹšinstvó) (minority) from ме́ньше (ménʹše), the comparative of ма́лый (mályj) (little), the sense being “those in a minority” (the Minoritarians), the construct being ménʾsh(iĭ) (lesser, smaller (comparative of málenʾkiĭ (small) and thus the source of menʾshinstvó minority)) + -evik (one that is (a variant of –ovik, the noun suffix)).  The source the Russian men'she (lesser), was a comparative of malo (little), from the primitive Indo-European root mei- (small).  Menshevik & Menshevist are nouns & adjectives, Menshevism is a noun and Menhevistic an adjective.  The noun plural is Mensheviks (Mensheviki in the Russian which is pronounced myin-shi-vyi-kyee).

The noun minimalist dates from 1907 in the sense of “one who advocates moderate reforms or policies" and was originally an adapted borrowing of Menshevik; as understood as "a practitioner of minimal art" it dates from 1967, the term “minimal art” being noted first in 1965.  It was an adjective from 1917 in the Russian political sense and since 1969 in reference to art.  It was comrade Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov 1870–1924 and known by his alias Lenin; revolutionary, political theorist and founding head of government (Soviet Russia 1917-1924 and the Soviet Union 1922-1924) who vested Bolshevik (as Bolsheviki meaning Majoritarians or those in the majority) and Menshevik (as Mensheviki meaning Minoritarians or those in the minority).

Comrade Lenin Agitprop.

Lenin was a classic example of a political phenomenon which would so frequently feature in twentieth century revolutionary politics: the middle-class radical.  His intellectual predisposition had already tended that way but it was after the regime in 1886 hanged his elder brother in punishment for his involvement in an attempt to assassinate the reactionary Tsar Alexander III (1845–1894; Emperor of Russia 1881-1894) that his interest shifted from the mostly theoretical.  Apparently somewhat an inept activist in his younger years, he was soon apprehended by the Tsar’s secret police and transported to Siberia where he wrote a treatise on Russian economic development in which he claimed that capitalism was already the country’s dominant mode of production, quite a startling assertion given the state of things.  He found himself on a sounder intellectual footing as a political tactician, his 1902 pamphlet What Is to Be Done? which advocated a rigid centralism in party structure, the vetting of members and a tightly enforced discipline.

Lenin actually borrowed the title from Nikolay Chernyshevsky's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel What Is to Be Done? (1863), a book not without critics but one which exerted a still often underestimated influence on those who would in the years to come build the political movements which culminated in the events of 1917.  It also drew the attention of Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) who in 1886 wrote his own What Is to Be Done? although it’s a work more of moral theology and was published sometimes as (the probably more accurate) What Then Must We Do? and (in English) as What to Do?

Lenin knew what to do.  A brief work of stark clarity, his pamphlet was quite a change from the verbose and discursive stuff of the era and attracted much attention although its uncompromising was too much for many, the second party congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party in 1903 ending in acrimony although Lenin did secure one pyrrhic victory, his faction winning a majority in the congress vote, enabling him to label his group the Bolsheviki (Majoritarians), the opposition responding, with some implied irony, that they were therefore the Mensheviki (Minoritarians).  The Bolsheviki accused the Mensheviki of being anti-revolutionaries and the Mensheviki labelled the Bolsheviki (and especially Lenin) dictatorial and intolerant.  Had the word fascist then existed, both sides would have used it.  As things soon transpired, defections meant Lenin didn’t long have the numbers and the Mensheviki became the majority (although both sides kept their names), prompting Lenin to damn them as usurpers and it was in this spirit the congress ended, the two factions setting up their own newspapers and network of spies, little time devoted to the revolution because of the internecine conflict.  The outbreak of revolutionary protest in 1905 was thus a surprise to both Mensheviki and Bolsheviki and neither side was sufficiently organized to take advantage of the situation which the Tsar’s forces soon suppressed with a mixture of carrot and stick.

Whether the revolution was to be in than hands of the Mensheviks or Bolsheviks was decided in the war-time chaos of 1917.  Without the war, the Tsarist regime might have endured but when in February it became clear the army were either unable or unwilling to act against the strikes and demonstrations, it became apparent to all the Tsar must abdicate which he did on 15 March (under the Gregorian calendar or 2 March under the Julian calendar then used.  The “administration” which formed in the wake of the revolution (of which the Mensheviks were a part) was from the start beset with problems, some of its own making and few were responsive to the methods adopted, the factionalized and quasi-democratic structures adopted ill suited to deal with the multiple crises of the time.  Strikes and other industrial disruptions may not have made the subsequent Bolshevik insurrection inevitable but the failure to extricate Russia from the war and the not unrelated shortages of food and medical supplies probably did.  What’s remembered as the October revolution (on 7 November (Gregorian calendar) or 25 October (Julian calendar)) was organized by the Bolshevik party and, having seized power, it wasn’t for decades relinquished.  Were there any doubt about the methods and morality of the Bolsheviks, the tsar and his family, under house arrest since March 1917, were on 16 July 1918 murdered although historians continue to debate whether Lenin personally ordered the shootings, documentary evidence impossible to assess because comrade Lenin order it all burned.

Spat

Spat (pronounced spat)

(1) A petty quarrel; a dispute.

(2) A light blow; a slap or smack (now rare).

(3) A classic footwear accessory for outdoor wear (technically an ankle-length gaiter), covering the instep and ankle, designed to protect these areas from mud & stones etc which might be splattered (almost always in the plural).

(4) In automotive design, a piece of bodywork on a car's fender encapsulating the aperture of the wheel-arch, covering the upper portion of the wheel & tyre (almost always on the rear) and used variously to reduce drag or as a aesthetic choice.

(5) In aviation, on aircraft with fixed under-carriages, a partial enclosure covering the upper portion of the wheel & tyre, designed to reduce drag.

(6) In zoology, a larval oyster or similar bivalve mollusc, applied particularly when one settles to the sea bottom and starts to develop a shell; young oysters collectively, especially seed oysters.

1350-1400: From the Middle English spat (argument, minor scuffle), from the Anglo-Norman spat, of unknown origin but presumed related either to (1) being the simple past tense & past participle of spit or (2) something vaguely imitative of the sound of a dispute in progress.  In use, a spat implies a dispute which is minor and brief.  That doesn’t preclude violence being involved but the word does tend to be applied to matters with few serious consequences but a spat can of course escalate to something severe at which point it ceases to be a spat and becomes a brawl, a fight, a murder, a massacre or whatever the circumstances suggest is appropriate.  Otherwise, a spat is synonymous with words like bickering, brouhaha, disagreement, discord, falling-out, feud, squabble, tiff or argument.

As a descriptor of the short gaiter covering the ankle (which except in technical and commercial use is used only in the plural), use dates from 1779 as an invention of American English and a shortening of the trade-terms spatterdash (or splatterguard) (long gaiter to keep trousers or stockings from being spattered with mud), the construct being spatter + dash (or guard), the former the same idea as the noun dashboard which was a timber construction attached to the front of horse-drawn carriages to protect the passengers from mud or stones thrown up when the beasts were at a dash.  In cars, the use of the term dashboard persisted although the device both shifted rearward (aligned with the cowl (scuttle) & windscreen) and changed in function.  In aircraft where the link to horse-drawn transport didn’t exist, the preferred equivalent term became “instrument panel”.

Stanley Melbourne Bruce (front row, second from left) in spats, official photograph of his first cabinet, Melbourne, 1923.

Spats date from a time when walking in cities could be a messy business, paved surfaces far from universal.  As asphalt and concrete became commonplace in the twentieth century, spats fell from frequent use though there were those who clung to them as a fashion accessory.  Stanley Melbourne Bruce (1883–1967; prime minister of Australia 1923-1929) liked spats and wore them as late as the 1940s but historians of fashion note it's said nothing was more influential in their demise than George V (1865–1936; King of the United Kingdom 1910-1936) eschewing them after 1926.  They days, they're seen only in places like the Royal Enclosure at Ascot or smart weddings although variations are still part of some ceremonial full-dress military uniforms.  Technically, a spat probably can be called a “short” or “ankle-length” gaiter but it’s wise to use “spat” because gaiters are understood as extending higher towards the knee.

On the Jaguar 2.4 & 3.4 (1955-1959, top row; later retrospectively named Mark 1), full-sized spats were standard equipment when the standard wheels were fitted but some owners used the cut-down versions (available in at least two designs) fitted when the optional wire wheels were chosen.  For use in competition, almost all drivers removed the spats.  The Mark 2 (bottom row;1959-1969) was never fitted with the full-size units but many used slimmer version available from both the factory and third-party suppliers; again, in competition, spats in any shape were usually discarded.  On the big Jaguars, spats (which had already been scalloped) disappeared after production of the Mark IX ended in 1961.    

On cars, it wasn’t until the 1930s that spats (which some English manufacturers called "aprons" and in the US they came to be called “fender-skirts” though the original slang was “pants”) began to appear as the interest in streamlining and aerodynamic efficiency grew and it was in this era they became also a styling fad which, for better and worse, would last half a century.  They’d first been seen in the 1920s as aerodynamic enhancements on speed record vehicles and some avant-garde designers experimented with enveloping bodywork but it was only late in the decade that the original style of separate mudguards (later called cycle-fenders) gave way to more integrated coachwork where the wheel-arch was an identifiable feature in the modern sense.  Another issue was that the early tyres were prone to wear and damage and needed frequently to be changed, hence the advantage of making access to the wheels un-restricted.  In the 1930s, as streamlining evolved as both a means to reduce drag (thus increasing performance and reducing fuel consumption) and as a styling device, the latter doubtlessly influenced by the former.  On road cars, spats tended to be used only at the rear because of the need to provide sufficient clearance for the front wheels to turn although there were manufacturers (Delahaye, Nash and others) which extended use to the front and while this necessitated compromise (notably the turning circle and cooling of the brakes), there were some memorable art-deco creations.

The aerodynamic advantages were certainly real, attested by the tests conducted during the 1930s by Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union, both factories using spats front and rear on their land-speed record vehicles, extending the use to road cars although later Mercedes-Benz would admit the 10% improvement claimed for the 1937 540K Autobahn-kurier (highway cruiser) was just “a calculation” and it’s suspected even this was more guesswork than math.  Later, Jaguar’s evaluation of the ideal configuration to use when testing the 1949 XK120 on Belgium roads revealed the rear spats added about 3-4 mph to top speed though they precluded the use of the lighter wire wheels and did increase the tendency of the brakes to overheat in severe use so, like many things in engineering, it was a trade-off.

1958, 1959 & 1960 Chevrolet Impalas.  Not actually wildly popular when new, accessory spats now often appear on restored cars as a “period accessory”.

In the post-war years, concerns with style rather than specific aerodynamic outcomes probably prevailed.  In the US especially, the design motifs borrowed from aircraft and missiles (where aerodynamic efficiency was important and verified in wind tunnels) were liberally applied to automobiles but in some cases, although they actually increased drag, they anyway appeared on production cars because they lent the desired look.  Because they added to the cost of production, spats tended often to be used on the more expensive ranges, this association encouraging after-market accessory makers to produce them, often for models where they’d never been available as a factory fitting or option.  Although now usually regarded as naff (at least), there’s still some demand because they are fitted sometimes (often in conjunction with that other acquired taste period-accessory, the "Continental" spare-tyre kit) by those restoring cars from the era although the photographic record does suggest that when the vehicles were new, such things were vanishingly rare.

Spats vanished from cars made in the UK and Europe except among manufacturers (such as Citroën) which made a fetish of conspicuous aerodynamics and in the US, where they endured, increasingly they appeared in cut-down form, exposing most of the wheel with only the upper part of the tyre concealed.  By the mid 1990s spats appeared only on some of the larger US cars (those by then also down-sized from their mid-seventies peak) and none survived into the new century, the swansong the 1996 Cadillac DeVille.  However, the new age of efficiency did see a resurgence of interest with spats (some actually integrated into the bodywork rather than being detachable) used on some electric and hybrid vehicles where every possible way of optimizing the use of energy is deployed.

1 1937 Mercedes-Benz W125 Rekordwagen

2 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Autobahn-kurier

3 1937 Auto-Union Type C Stromlinie

4 1939 Mercedes-Benz W154 Rekordwagen

5 1939 Mercedes-Benz T-80

6 1940 Mercedes-Benz 770K Cabriolet B

9 1970 Porsche 917 LH

8 1988 Jaguar Jaguar XJR9

Pioneered by Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union during the 1930s when the factory racing programmes were being subsidized by the Nazi regime as a national prestige project, spats were used on the specially tuned cars used for land-speed record attempts though not on the circuits where the air-flow was needed for brake cooling.  The use on the road cars was sometimes an overt allusion to the quest for aerodynamic efficiency such as those added to the streamlined 540K Autobahn-kurier (highway cruiser) but their use on big machines like the 770K was simply as a styling tool.  The highest evolution of the 1930’s theme was the aero-engined T-80, intended to lay siege to the world Land-Speed Record (LSR).  Powered by a 3,500 hp (2,600 kW), 44.5 litre (2,716 cubic inch) Daimler-Benz DB 603 inverted V12 (most of which were supplied to the Luftwaffe), calculations (all then by slide-rule) suggested it should reach 750 km/h (466 mph) on a 10 kilometre (6 mile) stretch of the Autobahn, closed to other traffic for the occasion.  Scheduled for January 1940, the outbreak of war meant the T-80 never ran.  In the years since, partial or complete spats have often been used on high-speed vehicles in competition.

1970 Chaparral 2J. 

The most extraordinary vindication of the concept was probably the 1970 Chaparral 2J, built for the Canadian-American Challenge Cup (the Can-Am, a series for unlimited displacement sports cars under the FIA’s minimalist Group 7 rules).  Although using a similar frame and power-plant (the all aluminum, 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Chevrolet V8 (ZL1)) as most of its competition, it differed in that the bodywork was rather more rectilinear, the transmission was semi-automatic and, most intriguingly, the use of two small auxiliary engines (Rockwell JLO 247 cm³ two-stroke, two-cylinder units which usually powered snowmobiles).  Unlike the auxiliary engines used in modern hybrids which provide additional or alternative power, what the Rockwells did was drive two fans (borrowed from the M-109 Howitzer, the US Army’s self-propelled 155 mm (6 inch) cannon) which pumped air from underneath at 9650 cfm (cubic feet per minute) (273 m3 per minute), literally sucking the 2J to the road, the technique enhanced by a Lexan (a thermoplastic polymer) skirt which partially sealed the gap between the shell and the road.  The rear spats (integrated into the body-shell) were part of the system, offering not only their usual contribution to reduced drag but increasing the extent of the suction generated by the extractor fans.  The 2J was immediately faster than the competition but the suction system proved fragile although, as a proof of concept it worked and it was clear that only development was needed to debug things.  Unfortunately, innovation and high speeds have always appalled the FIA (the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile which has for decades been international sport’s dopiest regulatory body) and they banned the 2J.  Really, the FIA should give up on motorsport and offer their services to competitive crochet where they can focus on things like pins and needles not being too sharp.

1949 Delahaye 175-S Saoutchik roadster (left), 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special  (centre) & 2016 Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100 (electric) (right).

Fashions change and spats in the post-war years became unfashionable except in the odd market segment which appealed to an older demographic and even there, as the years were by, they were cut-away, revealing more of the wheel & tyre but they never entirely went away and designers with big computers now don’t even need even bigger wind tunnels to optimize airflow and spats have been displayed which are mounted vertically, some even responding to dynamic need by shifting location or direction.

Flown first in 1938 and named after the Spartan admiral Lysander (circa 467-395 BC), the Westland Lysander was a British army co-operation and communications aircraft used extensively during the Second World War (1939-1945).  Although it couldn’t match the extraordinary STOL (short Take-Off & Landing) performance of the its German contemporary the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch, it was capable, robust and had a good enough short-field capability to perform valuable service throughout the conflict.  Like many aircraft with a fixed undercarriage, partially enveloping spats were fitted to reduce drag but those on the Lysander had the unusual feature of being fitted with their own removable spats (similar to those used on automobiles).  Once these were dismounted, assemblies could be fitted to mount either Browning machine guns or stub wings which could carry light bombs or supply canisters.  The arrangement was popular with ground crew because the accessibility made servicing easy and pilots appreciated the low placement because the change in weight distribution had little adverse effect on handling characteristics.

Bikini

Bikini (pronounced bih-kee-nee

(1) A two-piece bathing suit for women.

(2) A style of brief fitted low on the hip or slightly below.

(3) The name of an atoll in the North Pacific; one of the Marshall Islands and the site of two-dozen odd US nuclear weapon tests between 1946-1958 (with initial capital).

(4) As Bikini State, the UK Ministry of Defence's alert state indicator (1970-2006).

(5) In the retail coffee trade, barista slang applied to smaller variations such as a demitasse (or demi-tasse (half cup), used traditionally to serve espresso).

1946:  Although known as the Eschscholtz Atoll until 1946, the modern English name is derived from the German colonial name Bikini, adopted while part of German New Guinea and was a transliteration from the Marshallese Pikinni (pʲi͡ɯɡɯ͡inʲːi), a construct of Pik (surface) + ni (coconut or surface of coconuts).  Bikini is a noun & proper noun; the noun plural is bikinis. 

Proliferation; variations on the theme of bikini

Bikinis: Lindsay Lohan with former special friend Samantha Ronson (both in bare feet), Los Cabos, Mexico, October 2007.

The swimwear was first so named in 1946, the brief as a stand-alone garment adopting the term in 1960 while the trikini, dating from 1967, was a variation with separate bra cups fastened by Velcro.  A lack of structural integrity doomed the design for the mass-market but trikinis continue to be used by the fashion industry, mostly in static photography where movement is minimalized.  Trikini was at the time etymologically wrong because falsely it presumed bikini a compound with a bi prefix, an assumption not unreasonable because the English prefix bi is derived from the Classical Latin bi, which, like the Ancient Greek counterpart di, means “two”.  However, trikini is now etymologically correct because (1) bikini and its variations have been wholly been absorbed into English with compounds coined as needed and (2) progress in the fashion industry proved so prolific a new suffix (apparently first suggested by US author Bill Safire (1929–2009)), emerged: -kini.  Thus far seen have been:

Monokini (a one-piece swimsuit)

Bikini (a two-piece swimsuit with top & bottom)

Trikini (a type swimsuit which uses three, strategic-placed fabric triangles)

Facekini (a piece of swimwear worn on the head and covering the face and head)

Burkini (a full body bathing suit which includes a hood; a kind of figure-hugging Burqa for swimming of which not all muftis & mullahs (and certainly no ayatollahs) approve)

Mankini (a kind of sling bikini for men)

Bandkini (a swimsuit consisting of strapless bandeau top and bikini bottom)

Halterkini (a swimsuit consisting of halter top and bikini bottom)

Tankini (a bathing suit composed of tank top and the lower half of a bikini)

Skirtini (a two-piece swimsuit consisting of top and short, skirted bottom)

Microkini (a very skimpy bikini)

Slingkini (a one-piece swimsuit resembling the Y-shape frame of a slingshot which is supported by fabric at the neck)

Stringkini (a two-piece swimsuit attached by strings that is scantier and more revealing than a regular bikini)

Sidekini (a swimsuit designed to optimize the side-boob effect)

Camikini (a swimsuit consisting of thin-strapped camisole top and bikini bottom)

Flagkini (a swimsuit top informally created by the wrapping of a flag)

Duckini (a swimsuit made of a stick-on material (not to be confused with Kim Kardashian's endorsement of gaffer’s tape for use as ad-hoc corsetry))

Numokini (a bikini worn without the top (also called Unikini))

Underkini (a swimsuit designed to optimize the under-boob effect (not suitable for all))

Seekini (a translucent or semi-translucent swimsuit)

Hikini (s swimsuit with a higher-profile bottom)

Poligrill's helpful bikini identification chart.

Louis Réard (1896-1984) was a French engineer who took over his mother's lingerie business and the bathing ensemble he designed debuted in 1946.  As a concept it wasn’t new, such things documented by many cultures since antiquity but Réard’s design was minimalist by the standards of the time.  Although it was suggested he choose the name because an exploding A-bomb was his preferred simile for the effect on men, in subsequent interviews he claimed his mind was focused on what he expected expected to be an "explosive commercial and cultural reaction" to his design.  Although originally Réard’s registered trademark (patent number 19431), bikini has long been generic. When first displayed at Paris's Piscine Molitor (a large swimming pool complex) in July 1946, so scandalous did the established catwalk models find the notion of exposed navels that all declined the job so Monsieur Réard was compelled to hire Mademoiselle Micheline Barnardini (b 1927), then an exotic (ie nude) dancer from the Casino de Paris.  For Mlle Barnardini even the skimpiest bikini was more modest than her usual professional lack of attire.   

Le Monde Illustré in August 1947 applied a little of their bourgeois intellectual thuggery in comparing the denuding of the surface of Bikini Atoll by the bomb’s blast wave with the near-elimination of flesh-covering material in the swimsuit:  “Bikini, ce mot cinglant comme l’explosion même...correspondait au niveau du vêtement de plage à un anéantissement de la surface vêtue; à une minimisation extrême de la pudeur”.  (Bikini, a word now of explosions, compares the effect of the state of the clothing at the beach to an annihilation of the dressed surface; an extreme minimization of modesty.)  Even then however it wasn't something all that novel, two-piece swimwear often seen since at least the 1930s and French fashion designer Jacques Heim (1899–1967) early in 1946 had staged a re-launch of his pre-war two-piece swimsuit which he named the Atome, (atoms then much in the public imagination as something very small yet possessing great power) advertising it as "the world's smallest bathing suit".  However, unlike Réard's creation, it covered the navel, most of the buttocks and more of the breasts, enabling M. Réard truthfully to claim the bikini was "smaller than the smallest bathing suit".  The rest is history.

Le Yacht de la Route "Bikini" by Henri Chapron on the chassis of a 1937 Packard Super Eight.

The term “land yacht” came into use in the 1970s to describe the truly huge luxury automobiles which the major US manufactures all produced for most of the decade before emission control legislation and fuel-efficiency standards doomed the breed.  The Cadillacs and Lincolns were the most emblematic but on the basis of length, at 235¼ inches (5975 mm), the 1973 Imperial was actually the biggest.  All were highly inefficient and, despite the dimensions, were frequently comfortable transport only for two although once inside they were enveloped by leather or velour and the driving experience, although not fast by the standards of today (or even years gone by), was truly effortless, smooth and quiet.  So isolated were the occupants from the outside environment that a frequent comment was they seemed “to float down the road”, hence the term “land yacht”.  The dinosaurs of the 1970s however weren’t the first of the breed.  Before in 1940 taking over his mother’s lingerie business Louis Réard was an automobile engineer and one with a flair for publicity so he commissioned coach-builder Henri Chapron (1886-1971 and in the 1960s to become famous for his line of Citroën DS & ID coupés & cabriolets) to build what he called Le Yacht de la Route (the yacht of the road).  Chapron’s design included an actual boat bow, a cabin with portholes, a mast from a yacht and a rear deck where models would pose in bikinis when the car was taken around France on promotional tours.  Originally the coachwork was mounted on the chassis of a 1948 Hotchkiss Artois but its 3.5 litre (212 cubic inch) straight-six proved inadequate to propel to heavy load so it was swapped to that of a 1937 Packard Super Eight, the 6.3 litre (384 cubic inch) straight-eight easily able to cope.

Model Adriana Fenice (b 1994) in bikini.

The curiously named "Bikini State" was the system by which an alert state was defined by the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD) to warn of non-specific forms of threat, including civil disorder, terrorism or war.  Introduced in 1970, it was in use until 2006 and the MoD's official position has always be "bikini" was a code name selected at random by a computer; those who accept that story are presumably not familiar with the long military tradition of providing misleading answers, either to amuse themselves or confuse others.  There were five Bikini alert states: (1) White which meant essentially there was no indication of a specific or general threat, (2) Black which referred to a situation in which there was heightened concern about internal or external threats, (3) Black Special which indicated an increased likelihood of the conditions which triggered a Black Alert, (4) Amber which confirmed the existence of specific threats or the higher probability of entering a state of armed conflict and (5) Red which covered everything from a specific threat (including the target(s) to actually being in a state of war and at risk of a nuclear strike.  The need for a system which was better adapted to providing advice to the whole population rather than just the military & civil service was acknowledged after the 9/11 attacks in the US when it was recognised the threat environment had shifted since the Cold War and that the whole country should be regarded as "target rich" in much the way the security services treated Northern Ireland.  Accordingly in 2006, the Government adopted a new five layer system: (1) Low, last seen in the brief, optimistic era between the end of the "troubles" in Northern Ireland (1998) and the week of the 9/11 attacks, (2) Moderate which is about as close to "normal" as anyone now reasonably aspires to achieves and suggests folk should be "alert but not alarmed", (3) Substantial which indicates some event is likely, (4) Severe which indicates a heightened level of threat beyond the substantial and (5) Critical which suggests there is intelligence to indicate an imminent attack and security precaution should be elevated to their highest level.

Many countries have similar systems in place although most maintain different arrangements for civilian & military purposes, the latter always tied to specific protocols and procedures.  Some are trans-nation such as those used by the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and five-layers used to be the preferred option although this has changed.  In the US the military's DEFCON (defense readiness condition) uses five color-coded levels ranging effecting from "stand easy" to "global thermo-nuclear war is imminent or already begun".  The now defunct civilian Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS; 2002-2011) used a five-level approach but it was much criticized and since 2011 the US has used National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) which is event specific and defined by start and end dates, rather than maintaining the country in some nominal state of alert.

Sala delle Dieci Ragazze (Room of the Ten Girls), a first century AD mosaic in Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily.  For whatever reason, it was a later addition, added atop what's thought to be a conventional geometric mosaic.  

The bikini might in the popular imagination be thought a symbol of Western freedom and something which liberated women from the demands they remain as invisible as possible but the concept of the garment is truly ancient.  Some 2 miles (3.2 km) from the Sicilian town of Piazza Armerina lie the ruins of what would once have been the impressive Roman villa, Villa Romana del Casale.  A UNESCO World Heritage Site thought to have been built early in the fourth century AD, it contains one of the most extraordinary collections of ancient Roman mosaics, all though the works of African artists and artisans.  One creation which has proved of great interest is that which sits in what is popularly known as the Sala delle Dieci Ragazze (Room of the Ten Girls), depicting ten women, nine of whom wearing something in the style of two-piece bathing suits, archeologists suggesting the bottom being a loincloth made cloth or leather and known as a subligaculum, a scanty version of the male perizoma worn both as underwear and sometimes by athletes and slaves.  It was a design which is thought to have spread throughout the empire because archaeologists in Britain discovered during the dig of an old well a leather “thong” that was found to date from shortly after the time of Christ.  Its size and shape was exactly that of a modern bikini bottom and it’s now an exhibit at the Museum of London.

The top part was essentially a breast-band, known also to have been worn in Greece where the garment was known as a mastodeton or apodesmos (a strophium to the Romans).  In deference to comfort, mastodetons are thought often to have been made from linen.  The contribution to fashion is one thing but what interested historians was that the women are clearly participating in sports, their “bikinis” activewear and not swimwear.  Some of the activities are ambiguous but it’s obvious some are running, another is in the throes of throwing a discus while two are engaged in some form of ball sport.  Interestingly, the ball is multi-colored but whether this reflected the nature of sporting equipment in Antiquity or was a piece of artistic license isn’t known.  Of political interest are the young ladies with crowns of roses and palm-fronds, traditionally the prizes awarded to those victorious in athletic competitions so the events were, to some degree, apparently structured.  It’s a myth women in the Roman Empire were always banned from sport although there were restrictions in that men and women competed separately and while, in Athenian tradition, men generally competed naked (something outside the home not permitted for women), the ancient “bikinis” were a compromise which afforded comfort while avoiding unduly exciting any man whose glance might fall upon female flesh.

That the US nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll made the swimsuit a world-wide success was noted by one Australian entrepreneur who, after the British conducted their own tests in October 1952 in the Montebello Archipelago, some 60 miles (100 km) off the north-west coast of Western Australia, attempted to promote his own variation: the Montebello suit (actually a bikini under another name.  The tests, known as Operation Hurricane, came about because the British, fearful of (1) a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, (2) a possibly resurgent Germany and (3) a one-day un-interested United States, were anxious to possess their own independent nuclear deterrent.  The British project proved a success and the UK to this day maintains a boutique-sized but strategically significant array of nuclear weapons and a delivery system which permits them to be aimed at any target on the planet.  The Montebello swimsuit of the early 1950s was not a success but the name has be revived and bikinis using the name are now available.