Complete Dissertation
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of East Anglia digital repository Table of Contents Page Title page 2 Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 Introduction 5 Chapter 1 A brief biography of E J Power 8 Chapter 2 Post-war collectors of contemporary art. 16 Chapter 3 A Voyage of Discovery – Dublin, London, Paris, Brussels, 31 Copenhagen. Chapter 4 A further voyage to American and British Abstraction and Pop Art. 57 Conclusion 90 List of figures 92 Appendices 93 Bibliography 116 1 JUDGEMENT BY EYE THE ART COLLECTING LIFE OF E. J. POWER 1950 to 1990 Ian S McIntyre A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA September 2008 2 Abstract Ian S McIntyre 2008 JUDGEMENT BY EYE The art collecting life of E J Power The thesis examines the pattern of art collecting of E J Power, the leading British patron of contemporary painting and sculpture in the period after the Second World War from 1950 to the 1970s. The dissertation draws attention to Power’s unusual method of collecting which was characterised by his buying of work in quantity, considering it in depth and at leisure in his own home, and only then deciding on what to keep or discard. Because of the auto-didactic nature of his education in contemporary art, Power acquired work from a wide cross section of artists and sculptors in order to interrogate the paintings in his own mind. He paid particular attention to the works of Nicolas de Stael, Jean Dubuffet, Asger Jorn, Sam Francis, Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly, Francis Picabia, William Turnbull and Howard Hodgkin. Power strongly believed that to fully appreciate an artist’s development, it was necessary to acquire work from different stages of his career. The thesis investigates the reasons behind the important shifts made by Power from one group of artists to another and also examines how he kept an open mind about new creative ideas and remained at the cutting edge of art collecting into his old age. Power’s influence on the younger artists of the period and his support of public exhibitions of contemporary art are also discussed. New, previously unpublished, material from Power’s archives is used in the dissertation which also includes a DVD of taped interviews with artists and leading figures from the art world who talked about many aspects of Power’s personality and the range of his collection. The thesis demonstrates how Power influenced more than one generation of artists and how he made an important contribution towards the furthering of an appreciation of contemporary art among the general public. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Simon Dell, Head of the School of the World Art Studies and Museology, University of East Anglia, for his informed and helpful guidance over the two years of my research and the writing of this thesis. I would also like to thank the following people for their advice, information and assistance – Dr Margaret Garlake, Dr Alastair Grieve, Dr Sandy Heslop, Mr Derek Morris, Dr Robert Short, Sue Breakell the Tate Archivist, the staff of the Hyman Kreitman Research Centre, the Fondation Dubuffet, the Barnett Newman Foundation, and Mr Dave Lamb for his technical help. I have quoted extensively in this dissertation from a catalogue edited by Dr Jennifer Mundy of the Tate Gallery of a 1996 exhibition called Brancusi to Beuys, Works from the Ted Power Collection, which I found indispensable to my research. I would also thank all the people I interviewed about Ted Power, in particular Leslie Waddington and William Turnbull for their invaluable recollections, as well as my wife, Janet, and other members of the Power family for their uniquely personal memories. 4 Introduction The subject of this thesis is my late father-in-law, E. J. (Ted) Power who was the leading British collector of contemporary art in the period after the Second World War from 1950 to the 1970s. I decided to research Power’s collecting career for a number of reasons, not least because there has been very little written about him or about the extraordinarily wide range of his acquisitions. I knew Ted Power myself for 14 years and I am in the fortunate position of having access to Power’s own archive material and being able to discuss the man and his collecting with my wife and my brothers- in-law. I hope to show in this dissertation that a highly individual collector such as Power can influence more than one generation of artists and make a real contribution towards the furthering of an appreciation of contemporary art among the wider public. Furthermore, I believe that a detailed analysis of Power’s eclectic collection will give another perspective on the subject of post-war British art and its relationship with continental European and American painting and sculpture. One of the key factors in Power’s role as an art patron was that he did not come from an academic background and was therefore self-taught in many aspects of artistic endeavour. He had to develop his own eye – his own way of looking and assessing a work of art – and this in turn led to his unusual method of collecting in which he bought paintings in quantity, examined the work in depth and at leisure in his own home, and then made his own decision about what to keep or discard. This independence of mind was an important trait in Power’s character and in my opinion, accounts for his great success as an entrepreneur in business. The other point I would emphasise at this stage is that Power was always at the cutting edge in his own field of radio and television manufacturing and that was why he was always receptive later in life to the new ideas coming from the artists he admired. Power had appreciated the importance of good design from the early 1930s and the external styling of the radios his company manufactured were, to him, as important as the technical innovations for which they were famous. During and after the War, he was too busy to develop his latent interest in art and it was 1950 before his long-term involvement in design could be extended to other visual forms. The diversity of Power’s collection is one of its most striking features. Because he was educating himself about the various art movements of the 20 th century, Power acquired work from a very wide cross section of artists and sculptors. This dissertation will show how he purchased Irish, French, Belgian, Dutch, Spanish and Italian art as well as examples of British and American abstraction and Pop Art, among others. With his business background, Power was accustomed to buying in quantity and he continued this practice with works of art in a manner which was more American than British, but he sold only those paintings which no longer ‘spoke’ to him and then only after careful consideration. He accumulated an 5 extensive and remarkable collection, but this was known only to a few people connected to the art world, for Power was essentially a very modest man with no interest in self-aggrandizement and it was some years before he allowed his name to become known as a lender to public exhibitions. Although Power was Irish and loved a discussion or even a good argument, he was an exceptionally perceptive listener and readily accepted advice and comment from a small group of artist friends and professional dealers at all stages of his collecting life. One of his other great assets was his ability to relate to people much younger than himself and he assiduously visited artists’ studios and attended exhibition openings to meet them, continuing to do so when he was over ninety years of age. Above all, he kept an open mind and did not turn down new work on doctrinaire grounds. He remained intensely curious, always interrogating in his own mind the artist, the work and his own reactions to it. In this thesis, I want to discuss the overall pattern of Power’s collecting, in particular, the reasons for the important shifts from one group of artists to another. I will also consider the way he seemed to be ahead of the field in his purchasing of new work, often a year ahead of the first British exhibitions of artists such as Sam Francis, Asger Jorn, Ellsworth Kelly and R. B. Kitaj. Although he travelled regularly to Paris, it is surprising to note that Power only visited the United States once in his life and yet he was buying American art before the ground-breaking ‘Modern Art in the United States’ exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1956. A further aspect I will be examining is Power’s belief that the only way to fully appreciate an artist’s development is to buy work from all the different stages of his oeuvre and this he did in the case of painters such as Jean Dubuffet and Francis Picabia as well as sculptors like William Turnbull and Barry Flanagan. Because of the lack of detailed information about Power and his collection, I decided to begin this thesis with a biography of the man himself and his previous career, and then to explore the extent of his collecting chronologically to show its development over the decades. I also thought it relevant to write a section about some of the other British collectors of contemporary art from the same period, to put Power in the wider context of art patronage.