Dear Arthur,
When John Willets came to interview you in mid 60s for his book Art in a City (1967), he noted that you approved of John Berger's TV programmes.
In 'Permanent Red ( 1960) Berger's introduction states that when we look at a piece of artwork we take away with us the artist's way of looking at the world. He continues - ' a way of looking at the world implies a certain relationship with the world and every relationship implies action. It increase your awareness of your own potentialities. It promises an increase, an improvement. It doesn't even have to look optimistic in order to do that.
Berger asks how a work of art could help its viewer to 'know and claim their social rights'. Well it depends who is looking at it and when, he says, ie viewers who come to the work at various times might see in it a hope or encouragement for a better social situation in their own time, ie beyond the artist's original intentions.
Peter Fuller, once a follower of Berger , came to break with him over Berger's privileging of ideology in artworks, and his rejection of any content related to the universal human condition, and his lack of interest in artistic expression. (This reminded me of Peter Kennard's comment about Damien Hirst's work being about Death ' Yeah we all die , we know that. But what's more interesting is why some people get to die sooner and others later.')
They argued in late 70's, and I am not clear who came out the better.
Berger professed to be an independent Marxist, and Fuller a socialist. I started off a bit skeptical about Fuller because Julian Stallabrass was critical of him and because Fuller was critical of Kennard)
At first I thought your work suited the Berger approach, but what with the expressionist surfaces and the birth death and family life content... well should Fuller have a role??
bob
Friday, 26 October 2012
Monday, 15 October 2012
Dear Arthur,
British Social Realism in the Arts since 1962 (David tTucker-Ed) starts with a quote from Roy Bhaskar on critical realism.
"Realists argue for an understanding of the relationship between social structures and human agency that is based on a transformational conception of social reality" . This is Bhaskar being (mis)quoted by John Roberts ( it should read 'social activity'). Anyway, Roberts clarifies , his position - saying that social realism is 'art that has a political understanding of a world capable of social transformation.'
We know of course not to conflate realism with naturalism. But , can we still see Jesus flying off the cross as a form of social realism? Well it points to social transformation, l guess. Especially in the light of your own comments on the Black Christ:
" Human values don’t come first and we are oppressed. We are wrapped up and bound and chained and I tried to symbolise it in this thing in him breaking out of the tomb breaking out of the shroud that has kept us down. We’re all chained by that. That was why I done it”
Peter Peri is singled out by Anthony Blunt in C Day Lewis as 'descended' from Duamier, Dalou, Rivera, Orozco and Courbet. Peri's sculpture 'Man's Mastery of the Atom' (1958) seems to sit somewhere between Black Christ and The Daresbury Splitting the Atom sculpture, in style and subject matter respectively.
Anthony Blunt goes on " real art of the socialist state will be evolved by the most progressive sections of the proletariat who will have shaken off the most vicious effects of bourgeois culture [...] the bew art will be less sophisticated but more vital than the old"
This sounds like both Proletkult under Alexander Bogdanove (see Lynn Malley) and yourself at the Unity of arts Conference on Sunday 30 November 1969 at AEU Hall The crescent Salford. The meeting was aimed at bringing together Labour trade union, student , Co-Op and progressive organisations to find ways to bring art into the workplace ( TUC resolution 42) . Anyway at that meeting you were minuted as saying that " we should be satisfied with nothing less than the working class control of the arts, the communications media and education" You decried the notion that " middle class well wishers could bring culture to the masses.' And for good measure you added that all the arts construction , machinery, ships, houses were produced by working men".
You seem to be saying that there is an equivalence between producing art and producing the other material goods of society.
Realism, big in the 50s went out in the 60s , socially engaged art back in the seventies (art and society debates - Richard Cork- studio International. The Realism's fortunes somewhat tied to those of the CPGB and its relations with USSR. Seen simplistically as 'easier' than modern art, simplistically as a communist not capitalist.
Where to situate the work and life of Arthur Dooley?
Worker artist - like the Ashington miners, seeing an equivalence between art and non art production.
Nearly always in Liverpool, but perhaps with his best work outside Liverpool- Leyland Daresbury, Glasgow??
Definitely in Liverpool but hardly mentioned in the major accounts of Liverpool art ( Willets , Biggs, Grunenberg). Never in one place in Liverpool , but criss crossong - pulling threads together - Catholic, Cof E, Methodist, Scandinavian Church, Communist - Christian Marxist, industrial art , sacred art, hobby art, and the odd flirt with the avant-garde ( with Roger McGough at a'happening'.
Final position?
Worker artist but not just depicting the working class situation, but employing critical realism to suggest a future that can be different.
British Social Realism in the Arts since 1962 (David tTucker-Ed) starts with a quote from Roy Bhaskar on critical realism.
"Realists argue for an understanding of the relationship between social structures and human agency that is based on a transformational conception of social reality" . This is Bhaskar being (mis)quoted by John Roberts ( it should read 'social activity'). Anyway, Roberts clarifies , his position - saying that social realism is 'art that has a political understanding of a world capable of social transformation.'
We know of course not to conflate realism with naturalism. But , can we still see Jesus flying off the cross as a form of social realism? Well it points to social transformation, l guess. Especially in the light of your own comments on the Black Christ:
" Human values don’t come first and we are oppressed. We are wrapped up and bound and chained and I tried to symbolise it in this thing in him breaking out of the tomb breaking out of the shroud that has kept us down. We’re all chained by that. That was why I done it”
Peter Peri is singled out by Anthony Blunt in C Day Lewis as 'descended' from Duamier, Dalou, Rivera, Orozco and Courbet. Peri's sculpture 'Man's Mastery of the Atom' (1958) seems to sit somewhere between Black Christ and The Daresbury Splitting the Atom sculpture, in style and subject matter respectively.
Anthony Blunt goes on " real art of the socialist state will be evolved by the most progressive sections of the proletariat who will have shaken off the most vicious effects of bourgeois culture [...] the bew art will be less sophisticated but more vital than the old"
This sounds like both Proletkult under Alexander Bogdanove (see Lynn Malley) and yourself at the Unity of arts Conference on Sunday 30 November 1969 at AEU Hall The crescent Salford. The meeting was aimed at bringing together Labour trade union, student , Co-Op and progressive organisations to find ways to bring art into the workplace ( TUC resolution 42) . Anyway at that meeting you were minuted as saying that " we should be satisfied with nothing less than the working class control of the arts, the communications media and education" You decried the notion that " middle class well wishers could bring culture to the masses.' And for good measure you added that all the arts construction , machinery, ships, houses were produced by working men".
You seem to be saying that there is an equivalence between producing art and producing the other material goods of society.
Realism, big in the 50s went out in the 60s , socially engaged art back in the seventies (art and society debates - Richard Cork- studio International. The Realism's fortunes somewhat tied to those of the CPGB and its relations with USSR. Seen simplistically as 'easier' than modern art, simplistically as a communist not capitalist.
Where to situate the work and life of Arthur Dooley?
Worker artist - like the Ashington miners, seeing an equivalence between art and non art production.
Nearly always in Liverpool, but perhaps with his best work outside Liverpool- Leyland Daresbury, Glasgow??
Definitely in Liverpool but hardly mentioned in the major accounts of Liverpool art ( Willets , Biggs, Grunenberg). Never in one place in Liverpool , but criss crossong - pulling threads together - Catholic, Cof E, Methodist, Scandinavian Church, Communist - Christian Marxist, industrial art , sacred art, hobby art, and the odd flirt with the avant-garde ( with Roger McGough at a'happening'.
Final position?
Worker artist but not just depicting the working class situation, but employing critical realism to suggest a future that can be different.
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Dear Arthur,
At the writing group today we discussed diaries/ journals. I guess that is what this blog is, a journal about the process, but what with the infrequent blogs maybe we should call it the hebdomadair about the process.
Anyway. The process. Sounds ominous in a disappearing Argentine way.
This is the process. We must narrow down. In spite of all that we have heard about crossing borders, trans-discipinarity, 'partage du sensible', we must situate you in a context for you to be seen, heard , talked about.
Where are you? Where were you? Where do ya wanna be?
'Art and Society'- yeah it comes and goes but is always kind of there.....
Liverpool City of Radicals- you get a mention
John Willets - basically said what you said, but gets all the credit
So there you are,
an individualist radical artist tied to a radical city still pursuing the art and society thing long after Courbet and Proletkult and John Berger had gone to bed.
Will it do??
Is that you?
Love me doooooo
Robert Gaunt
At the writing group today we discussed diaries/ journals. I guess that is what this blog is, a journal about the process, but what with the infrequent blogs maybe we should call it the hebdomadair about the process.
Anyway. The process. Sounds ominous in a disappearing Argentine way.
This is the process. We must narrow down. In spite of all that we have heard about crossing borders, trans-discipinarity, 'partage du sensible', we must situate you in a context for you to be seen, heard , talked about.
Where are you? Where were you? Where do ya wanna be?
'Art and Society'- yeah it comes and goes but is always kind of there.....
Liverpool City of Radicals- you get a mention
John Willets - basically said what you said, but gets all the credit
So there you are,
an individualist radical artist tied to a radical city still pursuing the art and society thing long after Courbet and Proletkult and John Berger had gone to bed.
Will it do??
Is that you?
Love me doooooo
Robert Gaunt
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
What a day. the ideas coming faster now.
Firstly, thinking about how to write about your life and work. Montage might be important. Putting two styles side by side, a conversational vernacular style alongside a straightforwardly academic style . I'm thinking of something like the very readable Claire Bishop, who writes in a conversational style anyway.
Then there's more to think about on the 'love' topic. It started with your comment in' One Pair of Eyes' when talking about modernist architecture - "It's the opposite of 'Love thy neighbour.' there's no soul in this kind of building."
David Hulks' re-reading of Herbert Reads 'New Aspects of British Sculpture,' about Reg Butler and the 'geometry of fear' group, examines notions of love in those sculptures.
Basically, Read was into WRD Fairbairn's idea that art was all about sexual desire . Too little of the 'geometry of love' in an art work and it didn't work as art, too much and it was off putting (this was the '50s). It's that anarchist thing about sexual energy /political energy/ artistic energy-its all organic.
1950's- existentialism, the abyss of mutually assured destruction. Bertie Read was looking to art to come up with something more positive.
To get to the positive ie back to 'geometry of love' from the starting point of the 'geometry of fear' is a bit tricky but seems to go like this. It's about the interdependence of love and fear. In '40s/'50s Melanie Klein was all the rage in psychoanalysis. Her big idea was the paranoid-schizoid position. She thought that when an infant encountered the internalised 'bad object' in the form of the mother's withdrawn breast, then to cope with the fear of imminent annihilation, (the infant has not yet learned that the breast will come back), an ego coping mechanism of 'splitting' kicks in so the infant can cope with its fears by seeing itself as all good and the withdrawn breast as all bad. Later on the infant will be able to handle both good and bad feelings about the breast . So all this is normal and the splitting - sometimes they talk about splintering, can be reintegrated into a wholesome healthy personality. If the infant doesn't reintegrate then she develops schizophrenia. [Remember these are very old fashioned ideas about mental health].
 |
| Christ greets the women of Jerusalem |
Well that sounds like what's going on in the stations of the cross at Leyland.
For a start, all those welded stands look like knackered old timbers in the dockside, under the pier, something of the ocean bottom about them, like Bernard Meadow's Black Crab (1951-52) ' scuttling across the floors of silent seas'. The way the beams look as if they might collapse under the next tide. It's not only the crucifixion that's imminent but the annihilation of the world's flimsy foundations also looms. In spite of the threats of disintegration, Christ's nonchalant wave to the women of Jerusalem affirms that community life, neighbourly love, will endure.
What do you think?
Robert Gaunt
Monday, 1 October 2012
Dear Arthur,
I was up at St Ann's church in Oldham last week to see the Dachau Christ, it has been given a home there after being in and out of storage at Gallery Oldham. It looked different to how I remembered it when I last saw it, maybe that's because I am always looking at the black and white photo I have of you putting the finishing touches to it in 1968. The caretakers there told me that it has been hung in a recess so that the congregation can look at the altar without having to see it. There is still a split between those who admire it and those who hate it. So good to hear that it's still managing to disturb,
Yes, and I also went over to Leyland for a close look at the Stations of the Cross at St Mary's.
It's all research for a paper I gave at the university conference. Now I'm a student I'm "learning the terms of reference"so I can get the academics interested too. They do "speak a different language", but it's not that hard to learn it.
I'm putting copies of these letters on this blog, which I've called 'Love love me Do(oley)'. Clever eh? You know with the Beatles connection and all that.
But also because ever since I heard Terry Eagleton talking about Marxism and love, I've been keeping an eye out for 'love' in art history. So it was good to read David Hulk's essay 'Despair or Defiance: The Double Inflection' in 'Re-reading Read' - Michael Paraskos (ed) London :Freedom Press, 2007, pp. 144-151. It's all about Reg Butler and the geometry of fear group, but this time Hulks is looking beyond the inherent fear to a capacity for love that saves us from despair and moves us on to defiance.
Anyway I put this into the research paper, even suggesting that "Dooley's work might take us from the geometry of fear and despair to the figuration of love." I thought this was a risky idea, but did it any way. No one talks about love in this business, or if they do I haven't met them yet. They seem to shy away from it. Certainly no-one picked it up at the conference. Although I imagined them thinking - uh oh- sentimental, romantic. Someone recently asked David Harvey, talking at LSE, if we ought to get away from the romanticism evident in 'Rebel Cities'. He replied that he wasn't against romanticism, that it takes a little to get anything done. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM9IYtgZ8Sg).
What we all want to know is where you got some of your ideas from. I think I can see traces of Alexander Bogdanov and the Proletkult's ideas about an autonomous working class art that breaks away from dependence on bourgeois forms. I like that Proletkult argument that abstraction is belated not progressive. Were you aware of these ideas, or did you just arrive at them by way of your own reasoning. Did the Liverpool Communist Party talk about these things? What exactly did you say to Clement Greenberg when you gave him a tirade against the hard edged abstraction he was promoting? I will soon be going to the People's History Museum to look at some archive stuff to see if I can find out any more.
I am trying in all this to bring your story back into art history. At the university they tell us to "be reasonable: demand the impossible." So when I was thinking about the canon. I started to wonder if we should try for the impossible - canonisation- St Arthur, patron saint of working class artists. When I write to the Pope, I will ask if he has an answer yet to your inquiry about the resurrection!
Robert Gaunt
I was up at St Ann's church in Oldham last week to see the Dachau Christ, it has been given a home there after being in and out of storage at Gallery Oldham. It looked different to how I remembered it when I last saw it, maybe that's because I am always looking at the black and white photo I have of you putting the finishing touches to it in 1968. The caretakers there told me that it has been hung in a recess so that the congregation can look at the altar without having to see it. There is still a split between those who admire it and those who hate it. So good to hear that it's still managing to disturb,
Yes, and I also went over to Leyland for a close look at the Stations of the Cross at St Mary's.
It's all research for a paper I gave at the university conference. Now I'm a student I'm "learning the terms of reference"so I can get the academics interested too. They do "speak a different language", but it's not that hard to learn it.
I'm putting copies of these letters on this blog, which I've called 'Love love me Do(oley)'. Clever eh? You know with the Beatles connection and all that.
But also because ever since I heard Terry Eagleton talking about Marxism and love, I've been keeping an eye out for 'love' in art history. So it was good to read David Hulk's essay 'Despair or Defiance: The Double Inflection' in 'Re-reading Read' - Michael Paraskos (ed) London :Freedom Press, 2007, pp. 144-151. It's all about Reg Butler and the geometry of fear group, but this time Hulks is looking beyond the inherent fear to a capacity for love that saves us from despair and moves us on to defiance.
Anyway I put this into the research paper, even suggesting that "Dooley's work might take us from the geometry of fear and despair to the figuration of love." I thought this was a risky idea, but did it any way. No one talks about love in this business, or if they do I haven't met them yet. They seem to shy away from it. Certainly no-one picked it up at the conference. Although I imagined them thinking - uh oh- sentimental, romantic. Someone recently asked David Harvey, talking at LSE, if we ought to get away from the romanticism evident in 'Rebel Cities'. He replied that he wasn't against romanticism, that it takes a little to get anything done. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM9IYtgZ8Sg).
What we all want to know is where you got some of your ideas from. I think I can see traces of Alexander Bogdanov and the Proletkult's ideas about an autonomous working class art that breaks away from dependence on bourgeois forms. I like that Proletkult argument that abstraction is belated not progressive. Were you aware of these ideas, or did you just arrive at them by way of your own reasoning. Did the Liverpool Communist Party talk about these things? What exactly did you say to Clement Greenberg when you gave him a tirade against the hard edged abstraction he was promoting? I will soon be going to the People's History Museum to look at some archive stuff to see if I can find out any more.
I am trying in all this to bring your story back into art history. At the university they tell us to "be reasonable: demand the impossible." So when I was thinking about the canon. I started to wonder if we should try for the impossible - canonisation- St Arthur, patron saint of working class artists. When I write to the Pope, I will ask if he has an answer yet to your inquiry about the resurrection!
Robert Gaunt
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