LS LOWRY AT THE TATE BRITAIN
LS LOWRY AT THE TATE BRITAIN
There is snow in Manchester. It is 1946. Tiny figures, they are human beings, are walking past, a vast indifferent crowd. The crowd is organic, has a palpable life of its own. The city backdrop is immeasurable, like a vast sprawling beast. This is the art of LS Lowry (1887-1976). His dates are almost identical to those of Picasso although that is where the resemblance ends. Lowry is an artist of the north east of England. He lived in Pendlebury and depicted the life of the people of Manchester and Salford. The exhibition implies that Lowry is a Van Gogh figure (the exhibition counterpoints this idea by exhibiting one of Van Gogh's works). He is an untaught or self-taught primitive with gut instincts about what art is rather than formulated concepts. He is a person who just goes out and paints and never attempts to conceptualise his craft.
Lowry was a northerner and most of his work was concerned with the squalor, dirt and decline of Manchester, the great first born child of the industrial revolution. His paintings captivate in a way that the work of a primitive artist never can. They have a child-like, naive quality, moulding his little men, dogs, women and children into a vastly orchestrated, incomprehending urban space which slumbers like a leviathan in the background. He handles classic material like the football match, the northern funfair and the fever van that's a poignant sight on the streets of Salford. These paintings might have been dismissed as the absurd ruminations of an autist savant who happened to have a certain talent for art were it not for the fact that they are so deeply feeling, so intimately connected with the lives of ordinary people. In an intimate and revealing photograph Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson sits in front of a Lowry as if to say that Labour's policies and Lowry's painting had one and the same goal; to alleviate the suffering of the man on the bus, men who worked down the pit, who wore their flat caps, who complained about the awful Manchester weather and worshipped the heroes of football and cricket. However, Lowry was a conservative person who earned his crust by working as a rent collecter (hardly a typical left-wing profession). He was also surprisingly cosmopolitan, being dubbed "our Pendlebury Murillo" by the Manchester Guardian because of the social observations implicit in his paintings and also because Murillo had worked as a street artist. The link with Europe is moreover confirmed by his teacher Adolphe Valette (1876-1942) who brought the ideas and inspiration of the French Impressionists to Manchester. Lowry's interest in crowd scenes echoed the concerns of the impressionists. Lowry was mentioned in French text books in round ups of contemporary British art. Finally, Lowry had some of his greatest successes in France at a time when the British scene was indifferent to his work. He was, after all, a painter of stick men and stick dogs who inhabit a Manchester that's as familiar to us as is the surface of the moon.
As Lowry matured Manchester became a darker place, scarred first of all by the consequences of industrialisation, then by German bombs as Manchester survived the blitz. Lowry's paintings almost bypass the circuits of modern art and modernism. They have more in common with the Florentine Primitivism of Giotto and Cimabue or even a Byzantine ikon than with Matisse, Rene Magritte or Francis Bacon. In the end one must switch off Lowry. He's striding through Pendlebury with vast crowds of joyously cavorting, miculating, obscenely gesturing stick men and stick boys, stick women and stick girls. Stick dogs contemplate immeasurable metaphysical epochs as they defecate into drains, its all happening to the blaring oompah of a Northern brass band that's itself composed of yet more stick people who live on a stick earth that revolves around a stick sun. Manchester is grotesque, an inhuman place built by folks that are uniquely human and eulogised by uniquely deceptive artists like Lowry. Lowry eschewed awards, turning down the CBE, OBE and Knighthood that were offered to him. In most ways he is the quintessential primitive artist, technically hopeless, obsessed with one big idea, the great urban scene replete with its milling crowd but in other ways Lowry undermines this image and becomes a unique artist. He is a visionary with an indelible signature.
Paul Murphy, Tate Britain, August 2013
There is snow in Manchester. It is 1946. Tiny figures, they are human beings, are walking past, a vast indifferent crowd. The crowd is organic, has a palpable life of its own. The city backdrop is immeasurable, like a vast sprawling beast. This is the art of LS Lowry (1887-1976). His dates are almost identical to those of Picasso although that is where the resemblance ends. Lowry is an artist of the north east of England. He lived in Pendlebury and depicted the life of the people of Manchester and Salford. The exhibition implies that Lowry is a Van Gogh figure (the exhibition counterpoints this idea by exhibiting one of Van Gogh's works). He is an untaught or self-taught primitive with gut instincts about what art is rather than formulated concepts. He is a person who just goes out and paints and never attempts to conceptualise his craft.
Lowry was a northerner and most of his work was concerned with the squalor, dirt and decline of Manchester, the great first born child of the industrial revolution. His paintings captivate in a way that the work of a primitive artist never can. They have a child-like, naive quality, moulding his little men, dogs, women and children into a vastly orchestrated, incomprehending urban space which slumbers like a leviathan in the background. He handles classic material like the football match, the northern funfair and the fever van that's a poignant sight on the streets of Salford. These paintings might have been dismissed as the absurd ruminations of an autist savant who happened to have a certain talent for art were it not for the fact that they are so deeply feeling, so intimately connected with the lives of ordinary people. In an intimate and revealing photograph Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson sits in front of a Lowry as if to say that Labour's policies and Lowry's painting had one and the same goal; to alleviate the suffering of the man on the bus, men who worked down the pit, who wore their flat caps, who complained about the awful Manchester weather and worshipped the heroes of football and cricket. However, Lowry was a conservative person who earned his crust by working as a rent collecter (hardly a typical left-wing profession). He was also surprisingly cosmopolitan, being dubbed "our Pendlebury Murillo" by the Manchester Guardian because of the social observations implicit in his paintings and also because Murillo had worked as a street artist. The link with Europe is moreover confirmed by his teacher Adolphe Valette (1876-1942) who brought the ideas and inspiration of the French Impressionists to Manchester. Lowry's interest in crowd scenes echoed the concerns of the impressionists. Lowry was mentioned in French text books in round ups of contemporary British art. Finally, Lowry had some of his greatest successes in France at a time when the British scene was indifferent to his work. He was, after all, a painter of stick men and stick dogs who inhabit a Manchester that's as familiar to us as is the surface of the moon.
As Lowry matured Manchester became a darker place, scarred first of all by the consequences of industrialisation, then by German bombs as Manchester survived the blitz. Lowry's paintings almost bypass the circuits of modern art and modernism. They have more in common with the Florentine Primitivism of Giotto and Cimabue or even a Byzantine ikon than with Matisse, Rene Magritte or Francis Bacon. In the end one must switch off Lowry. He's striding through Pendlebury with vast crowds of joyously cavorting, miculating, obscenely gesturing stick men and stick boys, stick women and stick girls. Stick dogs contemplate immeasurable metaphysical epochs as they defecate into drains, its all happening to the blaring oompah of a Northern brass band that's itself composed of yet more stick people who live on a stick earth that revolves around a stick sun. Manchester is grotesque, an inhuman place built by folks that are uniquely human and eulogised by uniquely deceptive artists like Lowry. Lowry eschewed awards, turning down the CBE, OBE and Knighthood that were offered to him. In most ways he is the quintessential primitive artist, technically hopeless, obsessed with one big idea, the great urban scene replete with its milling crowd but in other ways Lowry undermines this image and becomes a unique artist. He is a visionary with an indelible signature.
Paul Murphy, Tate Britain, August 2013
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