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poliphiloEdward Burra lived just up the coast- at Playden on the outskirts of Rye. I'm currently reading his biography by Jane Stevenson. It was a peculiar life. He was the frail little man sitting in the corner of the nightclub, cafe or dive, with a bunch of glamorous mates- making the odd witty remark- and drinking everything in. Photographic memory, says Stevenson. Otherwise, when he wasn't ill in bed, he was sitting at a table- with pencil or paintbrush shoved into his arthritic hands- producing the watercolours that can now sell for millions. It was only when he was painting, he said, that he could shut out the pain.
He had rheumatoid arthritis and an inherited blood disease. He was scurrilous, kindly, asexual. The critics had and have a hard time pigeon-holing him. Unlike most British modernist painters he wasn't afraid of colour. His friend and mentor Paul Nash co-opted him into surrealism and he sort of shrugged and went "If it gets my work into exhibitions I'll be a surrealist" but he wouldn't, couldn't work to a programme. His early work is cheery if a little peculiar but then war cut across his psyche- the Spanish Civil War and then the World War- and he became a war artist- but not a chronicler of what happens on the outside when there's a war going on but of what happens on the inside. Lumpy, deformed figures, cowled or masked, are engaged in unpleasant pursuits that need some explaining. Only explanation there will be none. He didn't like giving his pictures names. Or talking about them at all. He was a just the channel . Let others interpret. There's a documentary made when he was in his sixties in which he sits and is sulky and swats away the interviewer's questions like they were mosquitoes. "I never tell anytone anything," he says. And then he smiles.
Towards the end of his life (he died in 1976) he turned to landscape. Andrew Graham Dixon says this is when he stopped being an observer and was gathered up into the quiddity of things,- and death was no longer something that occured to other people but the fog that was rising up over the hill he was being driven towards. He never learned to drive, of course. How could he? There was always someone else at the wheel.
I look at his work and think, "Does this stuff repel me or do I love it immoderately?" I can't work him out...
But I'll go on trying
He had rheumatoid arthritis and an inherited blood disease. He was scurrilous, kindly, asexual. The critics had and have a hard time pigeon-holing him. Unlike most British modernist painters he wasn't afraid of colour. His friend and mentor Paul Nash co-opted him into surrealism and he sort of shrugged and went "If it gets my work into exhibitions I'll be a surrealist" but he wouldn't, couldn't work to a programme. His early work is cheery if a little peculiar but then war cut across his psyche- the Spanish Civil War and then the World War- and he became a war artist- but not a chronicler of what happens on the outside when there's a war going on but of what happens on the inside. Lumpy, deformed figures, cowled or masked, are engaged in unpleasant pursuits that need some explaining. Only explanation there will be none. He didn't like giving his pictures names. Or talking about them at all. He was a just the channel . Let others interpret. There's a documentary made when he was in his sixties in which he sits and is sulky and swats away the interviewer's questions like they were mosquitoes. "I never tell anytone anything," he says. And then he smiles.
Towards the end of his life (he died in 1976) he turned to landscape. Andrew Graham Dixon says this is when he stopped being an observer and was gathered up into the quiddity of things,- and death was no longer something that occured to other people but the fog that was rising up over the hill he was being driven towards. He never learned to drive, of course. How could he? There was always someone else at the wheel.
I look at his work and think, "Does this stuff repel me or do I love it immoderately?" I can't work him out...
But I'll go on trying
no subject
Date: 2022-07-03 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-03 11:16 am (UTC)Ravilious has a story about himself and Burra when they were art students. They were sitting an exam- drawing from the nude model- and Ravilious , like everyone else, was producing a conventional life study. He glanced across at Burra and saw he was drawing a highly detailed picture of single enormous eye