PROJECT 11: OLD AGE.

OLD MEN OF THE ALMS-HOUSE.
68 x 100 inches. Oil on canvas.
PROJECT: OLD AGE.
Private Collection.

In the late 70's Lenkiewicz was invited by Plymouth Age Concern to give a talk on ageing. In order to make his point clearer he had himself disguised as an elderly professor. An assistant apologised for Lenkiewicz's absence and brought on with wheelchair and bathrug Professor Jeremy Jacobson from a London University hospital. Tottering onto the stage (and genuinely unrecognised) Jacobson/Lenkiewicz delivered a commentary on 'Geriatrics versus Gerontology'. He ended the talk with a vitriolic rush of quotations from saints and sages of western culture, illustrating that there was no such thing as a 'green old age'. "We harden in some places and rot in others; we never ripen. " Sainte-Beauve. "So you managed then, you got by somehow or other? Let somebody else do as much without breaking his neck. " Goethe. "I am a disgusting object; the flies, oh these flies, they smell a corpse. " Renoir. "The strange thing about growing old is that the intimate identification with the here and now is slowly lost; alone, no hope, no fear, only observation. " Einstein. "An armour of insensitivity is slowly forming around me; I observe it, I do not complain of it. It is a natural evolution, a way of beginning to become inorganic. It is what I believe they call 'the detachment proper to old age. 'I still cannot get used to the grief and afflictions of old age, and I look forward with longing to the journey into the void. " Freud. "In the 'monuments to the dead 'that stud my' history, it is I who am buried. " Simone de Beauvoir. "My diseases are an asthma and a dropsy, and what is less curable, 75 years. " Dr. Johnson. "You have my acutest sympathy for what you delicately call the 'nuisance of growing old'. A train has to stop at some station or other I only wish it wasn't such a ugly and lonesome place, don't you? " Rudyard Kipling. "An old man's memories are like ants whose ant-hill has been destroyed, one's eyes cannot follow any single one of them for long. " Mauriac. "There is only one irreparable and cruel evil in life - old age. Life is unbearable and the void is all I hunger and thirst for. " Anatole France. "My past escapes me. I tug at one end, I tug at the other, and all that stays in my hand is a rotten scrap of fraying cloth. Everything turns into a ghost or a lie. " Emmanuel Berl. "Life is like a play, acted at first by live actors and then finished by automata wearing the same costumes. " Schopenhauer. "The heart does not grow old, but it is sad to dwell among ruins." Voltaire. In conclusion, Lenkiewicz removed his make-up, put aside his walking stick and stood up straight, to find himself the most unpopular lecturer Plymouth Age Concem had ever invited. The project consisted of a large number of ironic images as well as many studies of centenarians, ranging from 100 to 113 years old. McVities decided as a mark of respect, to give to the 113 year old lady, a packet of biscuits for every day that she remained alive. She was dead in a fortnight. Lenkiewicz was brought up in an old age home and thought it a moving and salutary experience. It would however, be difficult to dissuade him from the notion that ageing is poor coinage compared with youth and middle age.