Double Vision
Until Sunday 30 October
The Lowry continues to present LS Lowry’s work in different ways. The latest exhibition of his work, Double Vision, takes an unusual shape. Pictures are displayed in pairs, inviting visitors to spot the visual obsessions and recurring themes to which Lowry constantly returned throughout his career. Double Vision also pairs Lowry’s work together with that of other artists - sometimes working during the same period as him, sometimes working years apart - who shared his choice of subject matter. These comparisons show us that, far from being an eccentric, artistic loner, Lowry is firmly part of 20th century British art.
The exhibition compares his early and late work, drawings with oils and different versions of the same subject. LS Lowry had favourite subject matter and particular ways of constructing pictures to which he returned throughout his life. Although some of the work, which will hang side by side in this exhibition, may be separated by several decades, the themes that unite them become clear. The exhibition will invite comparisons between early and late work, pencil drawings and oil paintings and different compositional devices. Most artists of note spend a lifetime trying to resolve a set of particular artistic ‘problems’, which continually haunt them, and Double Vision shows those, which haunted Lowry.
Double Vision includes other artists’ work, which have visual connections with Lowry’s. For example, a drawing by Adolphe Valette, who taught Lowry at Manchester Art School, will hang alongside a drawing by his pupil. Both pictures show the same art school study so invite direct comparison. The exhibition is the first opportunity for visitors to see the Valette drawing, which is a recent addition to the LS Lowry Collection. The most surprising juxtaposition, however, is a book of 18th century line drawings of invented faces, intended to demonstrate personality types, placed next to Lowry’s ‘Office Heads’ from the 1930s: both share the same grotesque interpretation of the human head, drawn with similar strong line.
For children (and adventurous adults), there are activities within the exhibition designed to encourage everyone to look a little more closely at Lowry. These include a memory game called Matching Pairs, and trails around the Gallery. Visitors can explore the ‘double vision’ theme by comparing an oil painting with a drawing, drawing their own version of images in the exhibition and finding works from different stages in Lowry’s career.
The Lowry offers a programme of modern and contemporary visual art of diversity and appeal. The LS Lowry Collection is presented in a dynamic way, with regularly changing displays encouraging visitors to take a fresh look at the artist. The exhibition programme alongside includes historic or contemporary work related either to LS Lowry’s work and career or to The Lowry’s own context.
Posted on Saturday, 01 January 2005 under Press Galleries Press