Legacy comes in different forms. It isn’t by chance that some are remembered a year, a decade, a century or 1000 years later than others. How can you be remembered? That isn’t up to you, but those who are left behind. The Romans and the Greeks had marble busts made of themselves, as well as amphitheatres and tombs, but when they were shattered in wars, we ask, who were they? The libraries and reputations that were burnt…gone. It might help if you become President or Prime Minister, but plenty of those get forgotten by the wayside. Good deeds, then? Surely if you name museums and build libraries in your name, after getting the money from slavery, like Hans Sloane, and sugar industry giants. Libraries close, sugar and tobacco, once staples, become poisons, money is no guarantee of lasting fame and then the truth of your legacy as a barbaric enslaver emerges. Still, there’s Sloane Square, and in 2007, someone commissioned a new statue of him. Sir Hans Sloane, will the sculptor be linked to the legacy?
Soon you’ll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most, or not even a name, an echo. – Marcus Aurelius 180 AD. Let the beauty of what you love be what you do – Rumi, 1273
Undoubtedly, the best way to be remembered is as an artist or writer, for money is no guarantee once you are dead. Look at Angela Burdett-Coutts, the invisible woman who practically built Britain (with an inherited fortune from her uncle Coutts) as a compassionate society in the 1800s. Who? Exactly, look her up. In the end, it is down to your relatives — the ones that are left behind — to keep an interest in your work alive, and your children’s children, and theirs too. That is a real Legacy building. The booming Agatha Christie Estate is held in place not just by publishers and agents but by a family business that is nudged and encouraged, an industry as if there were no other detective writers in her period. Picasso, too, as if there were no other artists! Thanks to Claude and Paloma and a list of lovers, all of whom gain from the Picasso name, probably more so with his death than when he was alive. The same seems to be true of Anthony Penrose and the Lee Miller estate, which will soon be featured in a Tate Britain show (2nd October). He found a box of negatives in the family attic after she died, which revealed his mother to him in a way she never could while alive. Anthony has worked hard as her biographer and made her images iconic, while Man Ray did not acknowledge her in his autobiography as a past lover. Her most famous photos are built around the war, notably of her taking a bath in Hitler’s bathroom as the war ended, but they are also mostly of women, when most wars are fought and photographed by men.
Coincidentally, The Blitz, a nightclub in Covent Garden during the early 1980s, which seemed to have disappeared like the buildings beneath a wartime bombing raid, has been resurrected by The Design Museum into a fantastic celebration of revivalism in 80s fashion style and ponce. As I am a part of it, having been an ex-Blitz kid, I dug into my attic boxes to resurrect my lovingly kept sketchbooks and notebooks from 1979 onwards for the show; my student train pass is even on display. Indeed, I have lived so long that I now understand that every 40 years, a genre is resurrected into the public eye, like the vomit of a Blitz Pina Colada, splattering everywhere. There was first the 80s fashion designer celebration at the Fashion and Textile Museum earlier this year, and Ithell Colquhoun, who died in the 80s and never really ’emerged’ as an artist until 30 years after she died, her estate bequeathed to the National Trust, is also showing at the Tate Britain until 18th October.
The legacy of families is not always smooth. The child who shies from the limelight might not want to, for a famous parent who was monstrous, do you wish to keep their legacy alive? What is the point? How many once-famous artists have disappeared into obscurity? Keep the name alive, if not for your career, think of your children’s artistic talent, which often skips a generation.
It is, above all, hard work being an agent, a publisher, and a biographer for your loved ones. So, are you even the right person to assess whether it’s a talent worth saving, one that deserves to be upheld, or was it all baloney —a fashion fur ball of fun that had its moment when it ballooned into public consciousness in the first place? Because fame is not only fleeting, it’s fabulously unreliable; as fast as you rocket up, you can be thrown back down to earth —kerplunk! But who can or should assess the worth of art in modern life? Someone has to be worth a million, apparently. Why not yours, when you were born with the equivalent of a trust fund minus the cash? You might not have been bequeathed the house or an actual trust, because you have to work for it, but if it’s your family name, why not have it remembered, upheld?
I am proud of my family name. I love my mother, Molly Parkin. I love her work, and what she managed to endure and achieve in her lifetime is incredibly impressive. I know she is 100% original, both in what she created in life and beyond. Molly will die soon, that’s not me being callous, she is 93 and has had Alzheimer’s for about 10 years, twice the time after the doctor notified us and we thought something’s amiss. To have been able to stage a retrospective of her paintings from 1958 to 2022 at the Chelsea Arts Club recently and have her there, present at the PV, was lovely. It brought her back to life; her eyes lit up with joy and excitement at the occasion. She was thrilled to see her work on the wall. She was celebrated, and she felt it; it put a smile on her face!
Painting was her first love, though she went on to change the world of fashion with an uncompromising modernist artist’s view of colour and form, and then wrote 12 best-selling novels and autobiographies. Moreover, she took the flak for being an outspoken woman, which then allowed more women to be heard. My first memories are of the smell, paint, canvas, and brushes of her studio as a toddler. She was happy, and perhaps that’s why painting still brings me such joy — it’s contagious. I have finished writing a biography of her and an autobiography of me – Molly, Me and Mum. I hope it’s read as a celebration of how creative she was with her life, that she took it as a blank canvas, not a paint-by-numbers, and taught me to do the same. We have one life, live and love it. Be passionate about following your dreams. This won’t guarantee a smooth or easy ride, but without the downs, you wouldn’t have the ups. And I have had the luxury to tell my side of it.
Any creative person with future egotistical posterity should remember that if you wish to be held in high regard later, be kind, loving, and generous to your family. Picasso, Joan Crawford and Wyndham Lewis are exceptions (and Wyndham Lewis is forgotten chiefly now); If you don’t want to be buried with your corpse but spread like your ashes, far and wide into the future, be fun and funny. Terry Frost is still exhibited all over the world by a loving family eager to keep his work relevant, unlike Roger Hilton. Other artists like Francis Bacon, who said, put me out in a black rubbish bin liner, how can it matter, you are dead! He had no children, but if there is money to be made, a legacy will be established, whether you want it or not. Molly Parkin doesn’t give a hoot, but I’m her proud daughter, and I do. A life well lived should be honoured if you are extraordinary. Women are often achievers who are overlooked. It doesn’t have to be done by the family; I didn’t have to do it. The right biographer, director, or curator can change a family’s fortune, an artist’s history. But if it isn’t about the money, the work, the business, perhaps the real legacy of any person, artist or otherwise, is found in the hearts of those left living.
The Art of Molly Parkin was on display at The Chelsea Arts Club from 8th September to 28th, 2025.
Blitz-The club that shaped the 80’s. until March 2026, The Design Museum
Ithell Colquhoun – The Tate Britain, until 18th October.
Sir Terry Frost’s work is now on Tate Merch as sketchbooks.
Below – Steve Strange was The Blitz – The Design Museum
Angela Burdett-Coutts was renowned for her compassionate philanthropy, donating all her considerable fortune during her lifetime. There is no statue commemorating her.