ART
exposed julian spalding
PALLAS
ATHENE
ART
exposed julian spalding
PALLAS
ATHENE
introduction
J
Percy Horton, Unemployed Man, c. 1929
ohn Nicoll, a man of powerful build with a strangely quiet presence, suggested I write this book. He was the longterm director of Yale University Press, then director of his late wife’s company Frances Lincoln Ltd, after which he retired, got bored and started publishing again under the mast of Wilmington Square Books. He came to see me in Edinburgh, though we’d never previously met, found out what I was writing and, to my surprise and delight, published Realisation—from Seeing to Understanding and a book I was working on with Raymond Tallis, Summers of Discontent: the Purpose of the Arts Today. On a visit to his home, through an odd serendipity, I knew something personal about most of the artists represented on his walls. He suggested I should write a professional memoir—an idea that had never occurred to me. But he added, ‘Don’t mention your girlfriends— no one is interested in them.’ I never got round to writing it while I was working with him, but when I did, I took his advice. I don’t think I would ever have written it at all without the insistent persistence of my old friend and colleague, David Phillips, former keeper of art at Nottingham Castle, whose eyes, the rapiers of his ferocious wit, belie his size. He’d heard many of my stories and was convinced that I should write them down. Conferences of curators often end in discussing labels, because that’s their most direct interface with their public. David became briefly famous throughout the profession for pinning ridiculously large labels to 11
introduction
J
Percy Horton, Unemployed Man, c. 1929
ohn Nicoll, a man of powerful build with a strangely quiet presence, suggested I write this book. He was the longterm director of Yale University Press, then director of his late wife’s company Frances Lincoln Ltd, after which he retired, got bored and started publishing again under the mast of Wilmington Square Books. He came to see me in Edinburgh, though we’d never previously met, found out what I was writing and, to my surprise and delight, published Realisation—from Seeing to Understanding and a book I was working on with Raymond Tallis, Summers of Discontent: the Purpose of the Arts Today. On a visit to his home, through an odd serendipity, I knew something personal about most of the artists represented on his walls. He suggested I should write a professional memoir—an idea that had never occurred to me. But he added, ‘Don’t mention your girlfriends— no one is interested in them.’ I never got round to writing it while I was working with him, but when I did, I took his advice. I don’t think I would ever have written it at all without the insistent persistence of my old friend and colleague, David Phillips, former keeper of art at Nottingham Castle, whose eyes, the rapiers of his ferocious wit, belie his size. He’d heard many of my stories and was convinced that I should write them down. Conferences of curators often end in discussing labels, because that’s their most direct interface with their public. David became briefly famous throughout the profession for pinning ridiculously large labels to 11
Room in Tim Stead’s house, the Steading, with his skeletal chair in foreground
Room in Tim Stead’s house, the Steading, with his skeletal chair in foreground
art exposed area’—a traumatic experience for me as I watched the bulldozers plough up and kill, in utter ignorance, all the creatures and plants I loved, and my first taste—one that has stayed with me all my life—of the potential meanness of the unimaginative, municipal mind. So I was a bit surprised when I went to art school, having thought I’d ‘put aside childhood things’ to discover a teacher who not only shared but also still delighted in this early interest of mine in natural history. David Measures was an oddball in every way. He’d been born with an inability to sweat, which meant his dry skin was more like a lizard’s than a man’s. I remember him as bald, which might not always have been the case, but he often grew a big beard. He was thin and extremely agile as if about to leap from the tips of his toes, rather than the flats of his feet. He had thick lips, always curling into a smile. But what was most extraordinary about him, almost alarming, were his eyes. They were greenish and large and seemed to take everything in, while he himself shrunk to nothing behind them, and became almost invisible. At moments like this, he was more of a chameleon than a human being. This happened particularly when he was painting, which he always did outside, in nature. He carried with him a board clipped with sheets of thick watercolour paper, a small black tin of watercolours, a couple of brushes and a biro pen. Water often had to be abandoned, as well as brushes, and he was left making do with his fingertips and nails dipped in pigment and dampened by spit to capture on paper his elusive, darting quarry. His speed of working and seeing was extraordinary. He was, and still is, the only artist I have known who could paint a butterfly on the wing. To do that he had to remain very still, not to scare them away in the first Opposite: David Measures, Purple Emperor Butterfly, 14 July 2007
240
art exposed area’—a traumatic experience for me as I watched the bulldozers plough up and kill, in utter ignorance, all the creatures and plants I loved, and my first taste—one that has stayed with me all my life—of the potential meanness of the unimaginative, municipal mind. So I was a bit surprised when I went to art school, having thought I’d ‘put aside childhood things’ to discover a teacher who not only shared but also still delighted in this early interest of mine in natural history. David Measures was an oddball in every way. He’d been born with an inability to sweat, which meant his dry skin was more like a lizard’s than a man’s. I remember him as bald, which might not always have been the case, but he often grew a big beard. He was thin and extremely agile as if about to leap from the tips of his toes, rather than the flats of his feet. He had thick lips, always curling into a smile. But what was most extraordinary about him, almost alarming, were his eyes. They were greenish and large and seemed to take everything in, while he himself shrunk to nothing behind them, and became almost invisible. At moments like this, he was more of a chameleon than a human being. This happened particularly when he was painting, which he always did outside, in nature. He carried with him a board clipped with sheets of thick watercolour paper, a small black tin of watercolours, a couple of brushes and a biro pen. Water often had to be abandoned, as well as brushes, and he was left making do with his fingertips and nails dipped in pigment and dampened by spit to capture on paper his elusive, darting quarry. His speed of working and seeing was extraordinary. He was, and still is, the only artist I have known who could paint a butterfly on the wing. To do that he had to remain very still, not to scare them away in the first Opposite: David Measures, Purple Emperor Butterfly, 14 July 2007
240
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art exposed
Q is for the queen
leader, he’d prepared himself for the royal meeting by putting on his full regalia and complete make-up while still at home. This could not have been done when he was here for the procedure included pinning into his bunched black hair birds of paradise, beak first, with their wonderful tail feathers spread out in a ray around his head. Thus regaled, he sat on the plane all the way from Papua New Guinea. But when he arrived at Glasgow Airport, customs wouldn’t let him in because he was not only bringing but actually wearing endangered species of birds. It took nearly nine hours of negotiation, indefatigably pursued by Rebecca with the relevant embassies, to allow him through. There was another problem. He’d written a speech for the Queen. There was great excitement in Papua New Guinea about his visit; no one from there had officially met the Queen before. I did my best to persuade her office to let him read it, but the diplomats were having nothing of it. I never really understood why. So Kauage stood massive and mute, a superb spray of colours in front of his brilliant paintings, as we approached. I introduced them, said a little about his work, and the Queen shook his hand, without uttering a word. My republicanism hovered back on the horizon. Kauage did some beautiful paintings later of his meeting with the Queen, him resplendent in his full regalia, her diminutive in bright pink, swinging a handbag. They clearly hadn’t talked. He was awarded an OBE two years later, but that was a token, not a human moment. A little later I led her up to meet the Scottish artist, Alan Davie, who was standing before a very big, striking abstract painting of his, which I had bought for the gallery: a great black horn bursting into a field of plenty, as bright as Kauage’s work, but without any narrative. At seventy, Davie could claim to be the premier modern painter in Scotland, a very early practitioner of Abstract Expressionism, not just Scotland’s but Britain’s own Jackson Pollock. As
such he’d become the Queen’s official painter north of the border, and for this reason she had one of his works in her collection. He was standing bolt upright in front of his painting, with his imposing white beard looking as though it had never been cut, next to his wife who still wore a towering beehive hairdo of the sixties. She looked a bit like Marge Simpson, except her hair was white. I was just introducing them, when Alan lunged forward, grabbed the Queen’s sleeve and shaking the cloth a bit said, ‘That’s a lovely colour!’ in his rich Scottish brogue. Oh dear, I thought, what’s coming next? One thing you don’t do is touch the Queen—I thought even he would know that. ‘You’ve got one of my paintings!’ he announced. The Queen, shaking herself free and glancing nervously behind him at the huge splashy abstract, suddenly remembered and said, ‘Oh yes, we’ve got a small one.’ ‘You should get a big one.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, quick as a flash, ‘I’d have to move house.’
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Lft to right: Pat Lally, the author, the Queen and Mathias Kauage, 1990
art exposed
Q is for the queen
leader, he’d prepared himself for the royal meeting by putting on his full regalia and complete make-up while still at home. This could not have been done when he was here for the procedure included pinning into his bunched black hair birds of paradise, beak first, with their wonderful tail feathers spread out in a ray around his head. Thus regaled, he sat on the plane all the way from Papua New Guinea. But when he arrived at Glasgow Airport, customs wouldn’t let him in because he was not only bringing but actually wearing endangered species of birds. It took nearly nine hours of negotiation, indefatigably pursued by Rebecca with the relevant embassies, to allow him through. There was another problem. He’d written a speech for the Queen. There was great excitement in Papua New Guinea about his visit; no one from there had officially met the Queen before. I did my best to persuade her office to let him read it, but the diplomats were having nothing of it. I never really understood why. So Kauage stood massive and mute, a superb spray of colours in front of his brilliant paintings, as we approached. I introduced them, said a little about his work, and the Queen shook his hand, without uttering a word. My republicanism hovered back on the horizon. Kauage did some beautiful paintings later of his meeting with the Queen, him resplendent in his full regalia, her diminutive in bright pink, swinging a handbag. They clearly hadn’t talked. He was awarded an OBE two years later, but that was a token, not a human moment. A little later I led her up to meet the Scottish artist, Alan Davie, who was standing before a very big, striking abstract painting of his, which I had bought for the gallery: a great black horn bursting into a field of plenty, as bright as Kauage’s work, but without any narrative. At seventy, Davie could claim to be the premier modern painter in Scotland, a very early practitioner of Abstract Expressionism, not just Scotland’s but Britain’s own Jackson Pollock. As
such he’d become the Queen’s official painter north of the border, and for this reason she had one of his works in her collection. He was standing bolt upright in front of his painting, with his imposing white beard looking as though it had never been cut, next to his wife who still wore a towering beehive hairdo of the sixties. She looked a bit like Marge Simpson, except her hair was white. I was just introducing them, when Alan lunged forward, grabbed the Queen’s sleeve and shaking the cloth a bit said, ‘That’s a lovely colour!’ in his rich Scottish brogue. Oh dear, I thought, what’s coming next? One thing you don’t do is touch the Queen—I thought even he would know that. ‘You’ve got one of my paintings!’ he announced. The Queen, shaking herself free and glancing nervously behind him at the huge splashy abstract, suddenly remembered and said, ‘Oh yes, we’ve got a small one.’ ‘You should get a big one.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, quick as a flash, ‘I’d have to move house.’
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Lft to right: Pat Lally, the author, the Queen and Mathias Kauage, 1990
art exposed
R is for john ruskin
Even more interesting, in the sister gallery in town, the Graves, there was a painting by Andrea del Verrocchio, the Italian Renaissance master, which was always known as the ‘Ruskin Madonna’ and was also owned by the Guild of St George. It didn’t take me long to find out what all this was about. Ruskin greatly admired craftsmanship. Though he had nothing to do with Sheffield—an industrial northern town wasn’t his natural habitat—he considered its cutlers to be at that time the best metalworkers in Europe. He wanted to encourage them to produce even better work and had the imaginative and generous notion to create a museum specially for them, a localised V&A—Ruskin was a major inspiration behind the Arts and Crafts movement and a friend and major influencer of the much younger William Morris. Ruskin bought the Verrocchio specially for his Sheffield Museum because he considered this artist to be one the greatest metalworkers in Italy in his day. Then he added many more works of art from his own collection and commissioned a whole team of copyists to paint architectural details that he’d found inspiring in France and Italy, included the vast Bunney of St Marks. To this whole extraordinary, often very personal melange, he added dozens of engravings of wildlife and flowers, including a set of John James Audubon’s magnificent The Birds of America, and a wonderful collection of mineral samples, because he wanted the craftsmen of Sheffield to be inspired by the works of nature as well as the works of man. With that aim, he opened his museum in Walkley in 1875, high on the hills on the outskirts of the city, with views of the beautiful Peak District, thinking that the walk up to it would, in itself, do its visitors good. He wouldn’t have anything to do with local politics, or with the industrial community, and left the whole enterprise to the Guild of St George, the charitable organisation he’d established in 1871 to put into practice some of his ideas for improving the quality of
life, particularly in the area of what we would now call ecological agriculture. The museum was so popular it clearly needed bigger premises, and the city moved it, at their own expense, to Meersbrook Park, in 1890, where it attracted even greater attention, not just in Britain but abroad as by the turn of the century Ruskin’s influence was at its peak. The members of the new Labour Party founded in 1900 were asked what books had inspired them—the majority replied, the Bible and the works of John Ruskin. Tolstoy built a new
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Andrea del Verrocchio, ‘Ruskin Madonna’, c. 1470
art exposed
R is for john ruskin
Even more interesting, in the sister gallery in town, the Graves, there was a painting by Andrea del Verrocchio, the Italian Renaissance master, which was always known as the ‘Ruskin Madonna’ and was also owned by the Guild of St George. It didn’t take me long to find out what all this was about. Ruskin greatly admired craftsmanship. Though he had nothing to do with Sheffield—an industrial northern town wasn’t his natural habitat—he considered its cutlers to be at that time the best metalworkers in Europe. He wanted to encourage them to produce even better work and had the imaginative and generous notion to create a museum specially for them, a localised V&A—Ruskin was a major inspiration behind the Arts and Crafts movement and a friend and major influencer of the much younger William Morris. Ruskin bought the Verrocchio specially for his Sheffield Museum because he considered this artist to be one the greatest metalworkers in Italy in his day. Then he added many more works of art from his own collection and commissioned a whole team of copyists to paint architectural details that he’d found inspiring in France and Italy, included the vast Bunney of St Marks. To this whole extraordinary, often very personal melange, he added dozens of engravings of wildlife and flowers, including a set of John James Audubon’s magnificent The Birds of America, and a wonderful collection of mineral samples, because he wanted the craftsmen of Sheffield to be inspired by the works of nature as well as the works of man. With that aim, he opened his museum in Walkley in 1875, high on the hills on the outskirts of the city, with views of the beautiful Peak District, thinking that the walk up to it would, in itself, do its visitors good. He wouldn’t have anything to do with local politics, or with the industrial community, and left the whole enterprise to the Guild of St George, the charitable organisation he’d established in 1871 to put into practice some of his ideas for improving the quality of
life, particularly in the area of what we would now call ecological agriculture. The museum was so popular it clearly needed bigger premises, and the city moved it, at their own expense, to Meersbrook Park, in 1890, where it attracted even greater attention, not just in Britain but abroad as by the turn of the century Ruskin’s influence was at its peak. The members of the new Labour Party founded in 1900 were asked what books had inspired them—the majority replied, the Bible and the works of John Ruskin. Tolstoy built a new
272
273
Andrea del Verrocchio, ‘Ruskin Madonna’, c. 1470
art exposed
t is for hock aun teh
Hock Aun Teh, Triptych: Tigers Do What Tigers Like, 1998
exhibitions he has had in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur. At one banquet in Beijing, news was brought in that ‘my’ country had just voted Brexit. The whole table—mostly of Chinese businessmen— fell about laughing. I asked Hock Aun why they were laughing. They were laughing, he told me, for three reasons. First was the mere idea that a government could ask the people to vote no or yes on an issue as complex as whether Britain’s economy would do better inside or outside Europe was laughably absurd. Secondly, they were laughing at the idea that the majority would necessarily be right about such a subject. And thirdly, they were laughing as they discussed what this might mean for their investments— should they buy Euros now, or dollars, or, even one suggested, with much hilarity, sterling? At one banquet (there were always banquets—the Chinese don’t trust you if you don’t drink, Hock Aun told me, which was a pleasure for me, though not for him) after a ceremony celebrating the spirit of his grandfather in the little village in 336
Southern China where his ancestors came from, I was sitting at a big round table (they are always round and big), dipping into the delicious local dishes spinning round before me, when a huge moth flew in and settled on the wall just above me. I am interested in moths and got up to look. It was a silk moth of the Atlas type, a great, arched, moon-patterned creature, much wider than my palm. I felt it shouldn’t be inside, in the glaring artificial light, and carefully nudged it to walk on to my palm and carried it outside, to everyone’s surprise. I released it into the dark, warm air, but it flew round and immediately came back inside, settling on the wall where it was before. I took objection to this and carried it outside again, releasing it further down, at the very end of the balcony in front of the house. But it flapped lazily back through the warm, black night, came in again and settled on the wall once more almost exactly where it had been before. I gave up and sat down again. 337
art exposed
t is for hock aun teh
Hock Aun Teh, Triptych: Tigers Do What Tigers Like, 1998
exhibitions he has had in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur. At one banquet in Beijing, news was brought in that ‘my’ country had just voted Brexit. The whole table—mostly of Chinese businessmen— fell about laughing. I asked Hock Aun why they were laughing. They were laughing, he told me, for three reasons. First was the mere idea that a government could ask the people to vote no or yes on an issue as complex as whether Britain’s economy would do better inside or outside Europe was laughably absurd. Secondly, they were laughing at the idea that the majority would necessarily be right about such a subject. And thirdly, they were laughing as they discussed what this might mean for their investments— should they buy Euros now, or dollars, or, even one suggested, with much hilarity, sterling? At one banquet (there were always banquets—the Chinese don’t trust you if you don’t drink, Hock Aun told me, which was a pleasure for me, though not for him) after a ceremony celebrating the spirit of his grandfather in the little village in 336
Southern China where his ancestors came from, I was sitting at a big round table (they are always round and big), dipping into the delicious local dishes spinning round before me, when a huge moth flew in and settled on the wall just above me. I am interested in moths and got up to look. It was a silk moth of the Atlas type, a great, arched, moon-patterned creature, much wider than my palm. I felt it shouldn’t be inside, in the glaring artificial light, and carefully nudged it to walk on to my palm and carried it outside, to everyone’s surprise. I released it into the dark, warm air, but it flew round and immediately came back inside, settling on the wall where it was before. I took objection to this and carried it outside again, releasing it further down, at the very end of the balcony in front of the house. But it flapped lazily back through the warm, black night, came in again and settled on the wall once more almost exactly where it had been before. I gave up and sat down again. 337
art exposed
t is for jean tinguely
Easter Island gods over the flat, vacant ‘redeveloped’ green fields where these factories had so recently stood. These figures were so much more redolent than Antony Gormley’s much more famous and more strategically placed Angel of the North, with is soft-form body, cast on Gormley’s own, and arms held straight out, like Messerschmitt wings, dubbed locally as the ‘Gateshead flasher’. As another wit put it, ‘I’ve seen a miner and a steel worker around here, but never a fucking angel.’ But in a way, Jean was right, and I tried to explain why I thought he was— how artistic creativity in Britain was being overcast by the fake, dark cloud of conceptualism, the exterminating angel of Antony Gormley, the hollow man of British art, and others like him. ‘Oh,
shit art!’ he laughed, and seemed all the more determined to do something with us. The back galleries were full of the wire cages and animated manikins of Jim Whiting, an old friend of Jean’s. He was one of the most brilliant contemporary artists I’d came across, but I never managed to buy any of his sculptures for any of the galleries I worked for, despite trying. I wanted, in particular, two drunken manikins of tramps, lying prone, twitching on the gallery floor. Jim wasn’t totally against the idea, but somehow never got round to doing anything about it or getting them into a state where the piece could be sold. He just wasn’t interested in that sort of immortality. Even Jean wasn’t as cavalier about his lasting reputation, or anything lasting, as was and still is Jim. I’ve rarely come across an artist so totally absorbed in his creative life. I once went to see the nightclub he’d created in Leipzig, in a disused factory in Baumwollspinnerei, an industrial area turned into a subsidised haven for artists after the Wall came down. The nightclub, called Bimbotown, only opened one night a month, but thousands flocked when the doors opened just before midnight. There were Jim Whiting sculptures everywhere: his suits flying in the air and his dancing trouser legs made famous in the pop video he made for Herbie Hancock’s Rockit. The highchairs at the bar would, of a sudden, start to spiral up, leaving you, and your cocktail, perilously balanced in mid-air. One tempting sofa, if you were unwise enough to sit down on it with a friend, would suddenly yawn wide like a mouth and gobble you down, throwing you backwards onto a passing bed. There were travelling beds everywhere, which visitors in the know got on early, carrying them on a ghost tour through the maddest, most wonderful nightclub in the world. Art for the people, in the streets, with nothing, absolutely zilch, to do with contemporary fine art and all its pretensions and sickening wealth.
356
357
David Kemp, The Old Transformers, 1990
art exposed
t is for jean tinguely
Easter Island gods over the flat, vacant ‘redeveloped’ green fields where these factories had so recently stood. These figures were so much more redolent than Antony Gormley’s much more famous and more strategically placed Angel of the North, with is soft-form body, cast on Gormley’s own, and arms held straight out, like Messerschmitt wings, dubbed locally as the ‘Gateshead flasher’. As another wit put it, ‘I’ve seen a miner and a steel worker around here, but never a fucking angel.’ But in a way, Jean was right, and I tried to explain why I thought he was— how artistic creativity in Britain was being overcast by the fake, dark cloud of conceptualism, the exterminating angel of Antony Gormley, the hollow man of British art, and others like him. ‘Oh,
shit art!’ he laughed, and seemed all the more determined to do something with us. The back galleries were full of the wire cages and animated manikins of Jim Whiting, an old friend of Jean’s. He was one of the most brilliant contemporary artists I’d came across, but I never managed to buy any of his sculptures for any of the galleries I worked for, despite trying. I wanted, in particular, two drunken manikins of tramps, lying prone, twitching on the gallery floor. Jim wasn’t totally against the idea, but somehow never got round to doing anything about it or getting them into a state where the piece could be sold. He just wasn’t interested in that sort of immortality. Even Jean wasn’t as cavalier about his lasting reputation, or anything lasting, as was and still is Jim. I’ve rarely come across an artist so totally absorbed in his creative life. I once went to see the nightclub he’d created in Leipzig, in a disused factory in Baumwollspinnerei, an industrial area turned into a subsidised haven for artists after the Wall came down. The nightclub, called Bimbotown, only opened one night a month, but thousands flocked when the doors opened just before midnight. There were Jim Whiting sculptures everywhere: his suits flying in the air and his dancing trouser legs made famous in the pop video he made for Herbie Hancock’s Rockit. The highchairs at the bar would, of a sudden, start to spiral up, leaving you, and your cocktail, perilously balanced in mid-air. One tempting sofa, if you were unwise enough to sit down on it with a friend, would suddenly yawn wide like a mouth and gobble you down, throwing you backwards onto a passing bed. There were travelling beds everywhere, which visitors in the know got on early, carrying them on a ghost tour through the maddest, most wonderful nightclub in the world. Art for the people, in the streets, with nothing, absolutely zilch, to do with contemporary fine art and all its pretensions and sickening wealth.
356
357
David Kemp, The Old Transformers, 1990
First published 2023 by Pallas Athene (Publishers) Limited, 2 Birch Close, London n19 5xd www.pallasathene.co.uk © Pallas Athene 2023 Text copyright © Julian Spalding 2023 The right of Julian Spalding to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means, electonic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Design and layout by Alexander Fyjis-Walker. Editing by Caroline Brooke Johnson Cover image: detail of Beryl Cook’s birthday card for the author (ill. p. 93) © Estate of Beryl Cook isbn 978 1 84368 240 0 Printed in England @pallasathenebooks @Pallas_books @PallasAtheneBooks