"Why don’t you show the Pictures?" Simon Martin, Head of Curatorial Services, on curating Edward Burra's comeback 25 years after the last major museum show
Earlier this year, whilst writing the new monograph on Edward Burra, it suddenly struck me that the major exhibition it accompanies will open on exactly the 35th anniversary of the artist's death. One would hope that this odd, and entirely unplanned, coincidence is a sign of approval from beyond the grave, which given Burra's interests in the occult might be entirely appropriate. In any case, it could be taken as confirmation of the timeliness of the reappraisal that is finally taking place, 25 years after the last major museum show of his work. It is hard to imagine why it has taken so long for it to happen – particularly as artists, collectors, curators invariably speak with tremendous enthusiasm and warmth about his work, often lamenting how rarely one gets to see it. Perhaps it is because Burra never quite 'fitted in' to the major art movements, except for a brief involvement with Unit One and the British Surrealists during the 1930s, which probably had more to do with his friendship with Paul Nash than any real desire to join art groups. It could be that as the bulk of his output was in watercolour, museums find it difficult to place them amongst naturally-lit oil paintings for conservation reasons, or because so many of the best works are in private collections. However, I suspect it may also be that when his watercolours are exhibited, they tend to steal the show – as they did at Tate Britain's recent 'Watercolour' exhibition. No other artist has handled the medium so robustly, with such intensity of colour, or on such a scale. Edward Burra, Silver Dollar Bar, c.1953, Watercolour on paper, York City Art Gallery, © Estate of the Artist c/o Lefevre Fine Art Ltd., London
In the months leading up to the exhibition at Pallant House Gallery there has been a surge of interest in Burra, which one could hardly have anticipated. Several paintings that had not been seen in public for many decades were sold in May at Sotheby's from the Frost / Evill Collection, one of the best Modern British collections to come to auction for a generation. Whilst everyone had expected the Stanley Spencers to soar, the rocketing prices of the Burras (four times the previous auction record for his work) were a surprise to even his most ardent admirers. At the same time a new documentary on the artist has been made by Andrew Graham-Dixon, which will be broadcast to coincide with the exhibition, introducing his work to new generations. One wonders what Burra himself would make of all this attention. The answer is perhaps in a 1970s Arts Council documentary in which he is wryly indifferent to all the probing questions about this and that, answering with a question: "Why don't you show the pictures? I don't know what all of this personality has to do with it… But then I suppose you have to have personality." Burra's complete disdain for hype reflected his idiosyncratically independent vision. He painted for himself, rather than for others, in a way that led the Whitechapel Director Bryan Robertson to make the otherwise unlikely comparison between Burra and his sometime Soho drinking partner Francis Bacon. Burra claimed that for him painting was 'a sort of drug' and when one considers the severe arthritis and illness that plagued him throughout his life, this 15