Fat ladies having fun
Michael Hall, Friday, 30th May 2008
There are few artists whose death will merit extended slots on the television news and double-page obituaries in virtually every newspaper. It certainly didn’t happen to Robert Rauschenberg, but in the UK this week the accolade was extended to Beryl Cook, painter of fat ladies having a good time. Her death prompted the familiar discussion about why an artist so widely popular is not represented in British national collections. The Guardian quoted the critic Brian Sewell as saying that she was responsible for ‘a very successful formula which fools are prepared to buy’.
Whatever you may think about such a remark, it is admirable that Sewell is prepared to say in public why he thinks a work is no good. Very few museum directors or curators will ever explain why certain works are beyond the pale in terms of what they want to acquire. So far as I know Nicholas Serota has never explained why the Tate owns no painting by Jack Vettriano, for example.
That is a pity, as there are serious issues to be discussed. Firstly, nobody seriously thinks that the Tate or National Galleries should buy pictures just because they are popular – if they did both institutions would be full of pictures of sunsets over the sea and kittens playing with balls of wool. More subtly, the Tate and National Galleries, and indeed virtually all art galleries, tell a narrative in which such painters as Vettriano or Cook have no part – just as we don’t set books by Andy McNab or Jilly Cooper in exams for English literature.
I think there is a good argument for a museum of popular art, where artists such as Vettriano and Cooke can take a place in a different story from the one told by Tate. It is possible, that, like L.S. Lowry, a painter once similarly treated in a de haut en bas way by the art world, their critical stock might rise with time. Look for example at the work of Edward Hopper, who is now given immensely popular exhibitions at Tate Modern and the Whitney. He seems to me an artist of remarkably little interest – he is certainly no better than Jack Vettriano. But the passage of time has been kind to him, converting his clumsy pictures into romantic images of film-noir-like romance. Beryl Cooke could one day also be an artist who says something in terms of art as well as popularity.
Previous
LATEST NEWS & COMMMENT
Seeing Sound
Moma's show on the impact of new media in the 1960s and 1970s recalls an idealistic age, before art aspired to control its audience.
Palladian games
The 500th anniversary of Palladio's birth is rightly being celebrated, but his influence on architects has in many ways been pernicious.
The Treasury's little rays of sunshine
The National Galleries in Edinburgh and London and the National Trust have formidable fund-raising tasks in hand, but the targets would be even higher were it not for Britain's tax laws – which could be about to get better.
Comments
Alec Hamilton
May 30th, 2008 4:13pmBeryl Cook isn't a very good painter. But that doesn't mean she isn't important. Nor that she isn't an artist. The comparison with Lowry is misleading, since Lowry knew how to paint 'properly', but chose not to, in order to speak more clearly. The same could be said of Picasso, Pollock, and perhaps even Guston. (Discuss!) Hopper, as you say, has risen in estimation. So have Klimt and Rossetti: I don't think posterity is wholly relable judge. Almost as capricious as current taste. The Vettriano comparison is more revealing. The notion that Tate is telling a "story" is interesting: but what story and whose? (The inclusion of Chris Ofili is as illuminating as the exclusion of Cook and Vettriano.) (And Tretchikoff, come to that!) The story, in a self-reflective way, may be the story of bourgeois taste - which fears most that which the public likes most. It is Arthur Danto's point - that art is what the artworld says it is. The artworld says Alfred Wallis is art - because Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood said he was. I am not sure I really see any difference between Wallis and Cook in either artistic impulse or result. So why won't the artworld allow Beryl to be art? I suggest the following: 1) She didn't take herself seriously; 2) she did not speak artworld speak; 3) her work is as accessible as a postcard. In Sewell's view, she found a formula for fools to buy. Which puts her on a par with Hurst and Koons and Warhol, doesn't it? That won't do. The only difference, surely, is that Beryl Cook was not trying to be an artist (she called herself a maker of paintings). She painted for the love of it. Did it the best she could. Didn't read the reviews. And, I rather think, didn't give a damn. I personally don't care for her paintings. But it is amusing that she is excluded from the artworld in a way which will reveal wonderfully to future generations something about the flaws in our culture. Not to mention snobbery.
Anne Wareham
May 30th, 2008 4:42pmGardens are struggling with a similar problem - no-one will speak out to say which gardens in the public domain are poor (or worse) and which worthy of the name of art. Some of us are now begining to work on this and engage in discussion of what makes a great garden,how we can evaluate a garden, the use of allusion in gardens and more on www.thinkingardens.co.uk
Post a comment