Salford's Finest

[poliphilo]

Today is Lowry's 125th birthday. I like Lowry. I think he's up there with the best artists of the 20th century. Jonathan Jones had a grudging piece about him in the Guardian this morning and people reacted by throwing shoes at it and quite right too. Lowry painted subjects that had hardly been tackled before in a style that was utterly distinctive- and if that doesn't make him a major artist I don't suppose I know what a major artist is. The bleak northern landscapes are what he's best known for but he did other things as well- portraits for instance and seascapes and weird fetishistic drawings (that he kept to himself) of girls in bondage gear. To see him in bulk- as you can at the Museum named after him in Salford is a crushing experience- but in a good way. They have a big canvas there called The Cripples which is one of the horridest things I know. 

Comments

Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

You have now put that song into my head; as I keep deleting from the WIP, I am playing it on Youtube.

It's one those songs that produces a weird, vestigial reaction in me that I now understand means I must have heard it being played when it was actually released. The same with John Lennon's Double Fantasy songs. It only happens with songs that were released when I was five or younger.

Re: Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a catchy song, but it makes Lowry out to be simpler and folksier than he was.

Re: Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

He sounds like he was a very intriguing man indeed.