This exhibition at Tate Britain displayed an extensive collection of LS Lowry's work throughout six rooms : each room representing a different aspect of the artist:
- Looking at Lowry
- The Idea of Modern Life
- Street Life : Incident and Accident
- Ruined Landscape
- The social Life of Labour Britain
- The Industrial Landscapes
I remember seeing Lowry exhibition at the Lowry in Salford many years ago but this new showing has more paintings which are hung alongside other artists such as Pissaro and Utrillo ... it seems he showed earlier and more often in Paris than London with Parisien critics understanding the link between his work and their own tradition. I had always felt that Lowry, a painter of the working class, was sympathetic to the working conditions and grim reality of everyday life of the people he saw in front of him. Seeing such a collection of works it seems to me that he is almost an unmoved observer and there is little within the paintings to really engage the viewer and draw them in. In some respects they seem paintings reminiscent of ' documentary' photographs - the rule of thirds carefully observed - the image with its often white background slightly over exposed. People talk about Lowry's appetite for the crowd but I feel it is his pictorial capture of 'poverty and gloom' through his images of industrial buildings and landscapes that convey the harshness of working life and living in the 20s,30s and 40s. His crowds veer towards the grotesque / comic in his later work.
No comments:
Post a Comment