Stuart Maconie on LS Lowry, Music & Morrissey
Stuart Maconie on LS Lowry, Music & Morrissey!
Aptly described by Peter Kay as the best thing to come out of Wigan since the A58 to Bolton, Stuart Maconie delivered an entertaining and thought-provoking lecture on LS Lowry last night.
BBC Radio 2 favourite and champion of popular culture, Stuart Maconie drew fascinating parallels between the artist LS Lowry and the musician Morrissey. They both evoked the North in the same sad, bittersweet and ambivalent way. Maconie said, “I genuinely believe that something of LS Lowry was in Morrissey and something of Morrissey was in LS Lowry, in the way that they responded to the North in their different mediums.”
Maconie maintains that LS Lowry’s popularity was a mixed blessing as it meant that he was not appreciated by the art establishment. Maconie’s music background was no doubt instrumental in his insightful and converse analogy with the world of rock ‘n’ roll where popularity does not suggest a lack of depth. Whilst the Beatles, associated as much with Liverpool as Lowry was with Salford, were allowed to be “both loved and respected”, Maconie highlighted how Lowry’s popularity led to a lack of respect from the art establishment and his stereotyping as a ‘regional’ painter.
Maconie championed LS Lowry’s rich cultural legacy and his depiction of the Manchester of The Smiths, Joy Division and early Coronation Street. Far from being the simple man he was perceived to be, Stuart showed how Lowry’s work undermined the common perception of the flat capped northerner. Maconie argued that Lowry’s work offers complexity and bleakness, lyricism and stark intelligence, combined with a sharp and articulate sense of humour. He concluded that the new Manchester of today couldn’t produce another LS Lowry or Morrissey as their melancholic work was so rooted in the time and place, capturing a Manchester that could no longer exist.
Maconie argued that LS Lowry is the most widely loved British artist of the last 100 years and has entered the national consciousness to a significant degree. Maconie cited the late Tony Wilson, who was one of Lowry’s most outspoken critics for many years, criticizing him for conveying a negative impression of the North. Even he was converted after The Lowry’s opening exhibition incorporating the breadth of his work in particular the vast and haunting seascapes, with their absence of detail speaking profoundly.
Maconie concluded that “The North lives on his work but LS Lowry is no more a Northern painter than Shakespeare a Coventry writer.”
With his recent best-selling book, Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North, taking a wry look at the modern reality of the North of England, this was the perfect time to hear Stuart’s views on our artistic Northern icon.
Now an annual event in The Lowry’s calendar, the LS Lowry Lecture is delivered by a critical commentator or artist working in any discipline. The invited speaker can talk about the artist’s work from their own perspective, exploring any aspect of Lowry’s work that particularly fascinates them.
The inaugural annual LS Lowry lecture, Why Lowry’s Art Lives?, was delivered by distinguished writer and curator Julian Spalding in 2006. He concluded that Lowry is the only modern British painter to have made a contribution to art on the world stage. Last year, Manchester born novelist Howard Jacobson delivered the second lecture, illustrating that even in Lowry’s famous, crowded street scenes, the artist’s work portrayed feelings of desolation motivated by the city in which he lived.
The Lowry is keen to show LS Lowry’s work in a wider artistic context. Exploding Paintings, showing until Mar 9 Mar 2008, takes an in-depth look at three LS Lowry paintings from very different perspectives. The artist’s biographer, a social historian and an art historian explain their very different viewpoints on the paintings, alongside those of schoolchildren and members of the local community.
Posted on Friday, 08 February 2008 under Press Galleries Press