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The Morris Dancer & The Rat Catcher The Morris Dancer & The Rat Catcher Commercial Road Southampton SO14 7LY 023 8093 2705 [email protected] www.southampton.gov.uk/art MODERN BRITISH FIGURE PAINTINGS FROM SOUTHAMPTON CITY ART GALLERY The Morris Dancer & The Rat Catcher PREFACE The Art Deco facade of Southampton City Art rummage amongst such treasures whilst selecting Gallery rises from its surroundings like a stately this show has been a rare privilege. ocean liner from the 1930s. A time when the city and its dockyards thrummed with the commotion Generous endowments by high-minded people of the golden age of trans-Atlantic glamour and who were proud of where they came from built Southampton was England’s gateway to the world. collections like Southampton’s before the age of cheap-day returns to the Tate, or for that matter Time and the Luftwaffe have left their mark since weekends in New York to see the Met. In today’s those heady days, but the snowy facade of the culture of centralisation, funds are hoovered up Gallery and Civic Centre still radiates the bright by the great metropolitan hubs, where they are optimism of when they were first dreamed of. perceived to have the most impact and influence, leaving many regional institutions to languish and Inside, one passes through the vestibule – turning deteriorate. a bit of a blind eye to the wrestling and panto posters – and ascends the staircase to be dazzled We are all in search of something that we can’t by a succession of graceful pillars arching towards quite put our finger on, and with the gradual vaulted windows that flood the interior with emptying of our conventional places of worship sunlight. It is a cathedral made for art. the role of art galleries as places that offer contemporary insights into spiritual truths has Coming back down to earth, the realities of become more and more important. keeping everything afloat become apparent. A once revolutionary natural lighting system in the Southampton Art Gallery is very important outer galleries is boarded up, as are the stone nationally, and, crucially, even more so locally, but niches created to house an exquisite Rodin bronze to fulfill its neglected potential it really needs your and other sculptures. The Rodin still nestles in its support. packing case in the vaults below. I just hope that this exhibition, by drawing aside There are a number of outstanding Modern British the curtain to reveal what is only a fraction of this public collections around the British Isles, but of wonderful collection, will help set the ball rolling them all – thanks in no small part to the guiding again. hand of the great Kenneth Clark – Southampton stands out as being in a league of its own. It has Jonathan Clark the best collection of paintings in Southern England outside London, amongst which happen to be some of my all-time favourites. So being allowed to 4 | SOUTHAMPTON CITY ART GALLERY 5 INTRODUCTION David Fraser Jenkins A painting of some stranger brings this person from the collection at Southampton City Art up to our sight, and we can stare back, so that Gallery. we can see all that can be learned about them just from looking, with no words or memories, That ability to shout out clearly, those candid but just a sight of this individual, brought back views of plain speaking, have resulted in a to life. And that’s enough for a while ... but jostling line-up of highly individual voices, each luckily there’s more to it than that, since a resistant to stylistic grouping, so that to make painting grows out of an encounter in some of this a grand display of art historical themes artist’s working space, so the subject’s feelings would be to miss the point. But this frankness about being stared at may also be seen comes as much from the shadows as from reflected in their face and whole body: how the limelight, from painting that could just as they are seen at the time inescapably involves readily show you a naked woman surrounded also their own response to the artist. by breakfast cereal as a City gent strolling in St James’s Park. In fact, some of the most The ways that modern British artists successful paintings of all here (and these approached the demands of such levels are some of the most successful in modern of interpretation are often disarmingly British art) are those that most reveal a long straightforward, shouting out clearly just engagement with doubts and hesitations. how these forces of looking had to be negotiated. These are works that record an It would be quite difficult to find a more intimate meeting with the person that the distinguished group elsewhere outside artist has chosen to paint, whether a friend London. The quality of these works is or some chance encounter, and they are seen spectacular, and this is just a part of the as individuals, not models. This quest for Southampton collection, a collection that individuality is a dominant characteristic of the seems more than ever to lack support, exhibition of modern British figure paintings however confidently it is housed in its Art which has been selected by Jonathan Clark Deco palace in a major city. Many of the city 6 | SOUTHAMPTON CITY ART GALLERY 7 Page 48 Page 78 Page 34 Page 62 art collections in Britain deserve far more that equal gaze. It is as if Spencer thought that whole circus of this exhibition, and must be of an apparently gypsy subject. He found an visitors, but it may be that of all of them, it is he should know his place, and so showed him amongst the best pictures in it. intense, ceramic-like colouring, and achieved a this one that merits most to be better known slightly comic, his moustache rhyming with the warm application of paint that makes surface and better valued. chair-back. Although these people here in this There is another precarious border, apart and shape together. With great subtlety she exhibition were mostly on good terms, our from the social, which is also a part of comes across as two performers, one the One of the two title works for this exhibition, social sense has to be kept alert at all points, friendship, across which sexual desire is made-up dancer, and the other a friend, with ‘Morris Dancer’ (page 18), is posing out so as to sense some patronising, as here, and balanced and held back by fear of over- a smile on her face beneath her circus lipstick, of doors on his day off, ready for drawings to spot all the triggers to class association. stepping manners. Nothing could be more and a reflective, dreamy look, utterly complicit and photos by William Nicholson. This man polite than Claude Rogers’ ‘Miss Lynn’ (page as she is fondled by eye. was a well-known dancer, and the honesty Social awareness is not just a matter of 48), a tour de force of restraint in full colour, of this encounter is there to be seen in this costume. Norman Blamey’s ‘Vesting Priest as the virginal model, a ‘Miss’, turns her head The modern British artists between the most level of all looks, smack in the face, the with Apparelled Amice’ (page 78) is indeed and looks but does not share her mind. The wars were like an unruly family, the siblings ultimate level gaze, the more peculiar coming specifically about his costume (his ‘amice’ – a artist seems to have worked behind a glass all knowing each other, all squabbling after from what seems a man dressed absurdly, or scarf – and even his 'vesting'), which is laid out wall, thinking upfront of colour and design, the same treats, looking somewhat alike, yet as if we are imagining the bull’s first sight of beside him. But the point is that he disengages but otherwise constraining his touch on this pushing each other into different manners. the toreador. Here is a mutual pledge between his look from the world and gazes up, as he woman who is too young, and too unknown. The pictures were smallish, for thin gilt frames, two performers, the dancer and the artist, is transformed, at this moment in front of us, to hang beside the chimney breast or the both engaged in a funny-looking activity, but into his priestly role. Evidently this artist also But away from such English restraint, where bookcase and not shock the relations. The both open and serious, with the potential for believed, and maybe he knew this man, but he there was a particular licence, Mark Gertler rooms were like those seen in the mirror in good conversation and likely friendship, and certainly could not reach the kind of man that could exhibit a properly voluptuous ‘Seated Sickert’s ‘The Mantlepiece’ (page 34). This is both part of some ancient dispensation. he is becoming. Nude’ (page 62), who even looks as if she a brilliant performance of broken colour and were dancing to the pleasure of his sight. globules of light, the more so as it is a trick, The other exhibition title work, the pest- The pictures by Nicholson and Blamey are Gertler had made a specific Jewish identity as half the painting represents the totally flat control-officer described by Gilbert Spencer equivalent, both knock-out portraits, and both with paintings like ‘The Rabbi and his surface of the mirror itself. Overall there is (page 60), whatever was his actual or former weird and troubling.