The LS Lowry Debate
Cultural Commentators go head to head over LS Lowry
The FIRST EVER LS Lowry Debate
Sun 1 February 2009, 7.30pm
Brian Sewell and Howard Jacobson
The Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London
Novelist and broadcaster Howard Jacobson joins Brian Sewell, art critic for the Evening Standard, on Sun 1 February to discuss LS Lowry’s work and legacy in what is anticipated to be a lively and provocative debate.
Lowry remains one of Britain's most popular and frequently reproduced painters and his work is permanently on show at The Lowry in Salford. He studied at Manchester College of Art and exhibited extensively throughout his lifetime, culminating in a record-breaking Retrospective at the Royal Academy.
Yet some critics still dub him as an amateur painter and dismiss his work as little more than a nostalgic celebration of a northern industrial experience that has long since passed. Two of Britain’s most accomplished cultural commentators go head to head over LS Lowry, discussing their contrasting views on the artist.
Brian Sewell, one of Lowry’s staunchest critics, has written that he was "a nincompoop", whose "ponderously booted matchstick men, urban idiots, pop-eyes portraits and strange perspectives are the work of a trivial painter, a man of tricks, mannerisms and small things". Brian Sewell’s disdain for popular taste once led him to complain that "if the National Gallery were in the hands of public opinion, it would be filled with the works of LS Lowry".
Howard Jacobson argues that Lowry is underrated and seriously misunderstood by many art critics. A fellow Mancunian, Jacobson is keen to highlight Lowry’s powerful range of work – from dark and complex portraits to melancholic seascapes. Indeed Lowry has recently been described as the “greatest seascape painter of the 20th century” (The Guardian, 28 Oct 2008).
This is the first ever debate of this kind as previously The Lowry has staged an annual LS Lowry Lecture, inviting a critical commentator or artist to talk about the artist’s work from their own perspective. Howard Jacobson delivered the Lowry lecture in 2007 when he delved into Manchester’s cultural history and the psyche of the Mancunian, to explain his views on how the city helped shape what he describes as Lowry’s “vast loneliness”.
In his lecture, Jacobson defended Lowry’s supposed provincialism, arguing that the artist’s rejection of art world snobbery became an artistic strategy: “not a misfortune of birth or temperament, but a wilful rejection, not simply of metropolitan fashion and facility, but of the very idea of a gravitational centre”.
The Lowry, home to the world’s largest public collection of works by Lowry, continues to present his paintings and drawings in regularly changing thematic displays to encourage visitors to take a fresh look at the artist.
Robert Robson, Artistic Director of The Lowry, commented “Now is the time to consider again Lowry’s important place in the history of British art. Our annual Lowry Lecture has made a constructive contribution towards this and we look forward to this stimulating debate which should also be an entertaining evening.”
The inaugural LS Lowry lecture, Why Lowry’s Art Lives was delivered by distinguished writer and curator Julian Spalding in 2006 and the most recent lecture was delivered by cultural commentator, Stuart Maconie.
The Lowry Centre Trust is a not-for-profit charitable organisation and registered charity (no. 1053962). All income supports our world-class Theatres and Galleries programmes, the care and display of the LS Lowry Collection and our life-changing Community and Education work.
This debate is presented by The Lowry in Salford and takes place in London.
Posted on Wednesday, 03 December 2008 under Press General Press