The FIRST EVER LS Lowry Debate
Masterpieces or just Matchstick Men?
The FIRST EVER LS Lowry Debate
Sun 1 February 2009, 7.30pm
Brian Sewell and Howard Jacobson
The Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, London
Art critic Brian Sewell will debate LS Lowry's work & legacy with novelist & broadcaster Howard Jacobson, in the first ever debate about the artist, which replaces the annual Lowry Lecture. Sewell has previously described Lowry as 'a trivial painter, a man of tricks, mannerisms & small things', while Jacobson argues that he is underrated & seriously misunderstood by many art critics.
Howard anticipates that the audience can expect “a passionate discussion of art, sophisticated fisticuffs, mental and verbal fireworks and a rollicking good time. Other than the pleasure of looking at art itself, there is nothing as enjoyable as talking about it, and I am hoping that the audience will be sufficiently energized both by the art and by our disagreements about it, to join in.”
The Lowry has invited two of Britain’s most accomplished cultural commentators to go head to head over LS Lowry, discussing their contrasting views on the artist. A lively and provocative debate is expected with Sewell, one of Lowry's staunchest critics, complemented by Jacobson, who defended Lowry's reputation and provincialism in the 2007 Lowry Lecture.
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".
A fellow Mancunian, Howard 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” (Robert Clark, The Guardian, 28 Oct 2008). Howard argued 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”.
As a regular columnist for the Independent, Howard Jacobson wrote an edited version of his Lowry Lecture for their Arts & Books supplement, outlining how Manchester was the scene for Lowry’s loneliness. 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”.
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.
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 Thursday, 22 January 2009 under Press General Press Galleries Press