(via: Tate)
When I was a child I couldn’t draw hands. I tried, spending hours trying to perfect them but never could. I think it was my mum who mentioned one day that my figures were like Lowry’s and showed me one of his paintings. It was only after this that I gave up my futile quest to draw the perfect digits and started solely drawing people with their hands hidden. Wedged in their pockets, behind their backs, hidden by furniture. Any way I could avoid drawing them. This (in my mind at least) gave me an affinity with L.S Lowry which has lasted for years. So I am looking forward to Tate’s first ever Lowry exhibit. Lowry is the people’s artist, the documenter of the working-classes. His work, arguably, resonates with people far more than any other.
The campaign to get Lowry into the Tate has been going on since 2011, when backers including Sir Ian McKellen (GANDALF!) and Noel Gallagher called for his work to be included in Tate’s extensive British art collection.
After so long Lowry is finally where many felt he belonged. So, I was interested to hear what my favourite art critic (of course I have a favourite critic the same way other people have a favourite singer) Waldemar Januszczak had to say on the matter.
Lowry was relentlessly one-dimensional and limited. In particular, he was an awful summeriser of people. Here’s a painter who sprinkles crowds into a scene like someone putting pepper onto a boiled egg… Something else that’s is unpleasant is the sense of judgemental distance he maintains; the air of overlordship.
-Waldemar Januszczak,
Oh.
The Lowry who emerges here is the one we’ve always known about: repetitive, drab, overstylised and professionally northern
Uh, I don’t think he liked it. Before I jump to Lowry’s defence here I just want to point out that I’m not northern (I’m an Essex girl- see some of us can read, write and form full sentences. TOWIE is all lies) so I don’t have any cultural ties to his paintings, but I think Lowry says more about what it is to be British. I don’t dispute that he was repetitive, drab or even that he somewhat carelessly scattered people into his paintings. I think that was exactly what Lowry was going for. The north was stereotypically seen as ‘grim’ and industrialised. It was the manufacturing hub of Britain. Factories employed a large percentage of the population of the towns in which they were situated. Monday-Friday was a blur work and home. Monotony. For me, Lowry’s anonymous ‘stick men’ summed up the life they had. They were just workers. Just the cogs that turned the wheel. Lowry, like no other artist, reflected what the working-class public, and not the upper-classes, did in their lives. They lived un-extraordinary lives.
Stepping back from that though, considering the public response to Lowry alone should mean inclusion in the Tate and in the honour roll of great British artists. Art, especially in Britain has a class problem. Let’s be honest. I won’t trot out the conspiracy theories about Lowry’s omission from the Tate (too northern/too working class?) because I don’t believe them but I do believe that Lowry suffered for being popular. Popular art gets branded as ‘kitsch’ and is relegated to cheap prints and place mats. Popular art just isn’t respected by the art world. You wouldn’t see a Marc Quinn or a Mark Wallinger in The Sun or The Daily Mail but you would see a Lowry. Art institutions need to start listening to what the public wants more. Now,I’m not advocating allowing the public full control of galleries but if you can entice them in with something, dare I say it, safe and popular, they’ll be exposed to other, more challenging works. Tate is making a great step to creating a more open and inviting art institution, which will only help bring British art firmly back to the people.
Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life is on at Tate Britain and runs till 30 October.
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/lowry-and-painting-modern-life
You wouldn’t want to disappoint Gandalf by not going now would you?
*sorry about the Sunday Times link. Poor show from them trying to make people pay to read articles ONLINE. ‘Special price of £6 down from £12. Ridiculous. *
Picasso and Pints 
One Comment Add yours