DOI issue:
Nr. 3-4
DOI article:Artykuł i Komunikaty
DOI article:Nosal, Krzysztof: Stanley Spencer - "po stronie aniołów i brudu"
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49350#0617
596
Krzysztof Nosal
He upgraded them through turning them into
mythological characters, thus going in the opposite
direction to the traditional grotesąue, which
downgraded the reality it despised. His loving care of
all beings neglected and rejected includes rubbish, or
rather ‘unfairly discarded things’ and he admitted: ‘I
am on the side of angels and dirt. ’
The tonę of his paintings seems closer to the works
of the Polish painters Witold Wojtkiewicz and Tadeusz
Makowski, representatives of the lyrical grotesąue.
They often painted children, whereas Spencer looks
at the world with the childlike, or rather a childhood
eye; a characteristic of Balthus and Bruno Schulz too.
Spencer’s relationship to Bruno Schulz deserves
an in-depth examination - it does not end with a similar
physiąue and datę of birth. Spencer’s drawings of a
man walked on a leash or kissing a foot stretched out
by an alluring girl could be placed straight away in the
Book ofldolatry. There is a masochistic streak in both
of them; attachment to an ‘intimate space’, significance
of the father - a patriarchal figurę trailing behind the
rapidly changing world, still omnipresent...
What is the perception of Spencer’s art today?
Currently, we are witnessing a renewed interest in his
art, heralded by the inclusion of his works in prestigious
exhibitions: Les Realismes (Centre Georges Pompidou,
1981) and Alterity and Identity (Venice, 1995)
confirmed by his great retrospective in Washington,
Mexico City and San Francisco in 1998. Why is that
so? Does the idiosyncrasy and intimate character of
his art place him alongside the great individualities of
the 20th century? Has his art become morę popular
because of its self-absorbed approach, so fashionable
nowadays? Or maybe it is because his eclectic religious
views so smoothly fit into post-modernism? Maybe
his love for every creature and useless thing makes
him much better comprehended today? Or maybe his
art has resurfaced in the wake of the figurative painting
renaissance, led by such giants as Botero?
The exhibitionism of his art might be irritating.
When painting loved ones, treating painting like
a love gamę with the desired body, he resembles Bacon.
Spencer wrote to Peggy Andrews: ‘What you once
said that you felt you had some personal experience
with a person when you had drawn them, don’t you
think that experience was a wonderful sexual
experience?’ However, Bacon raped the bodies he
painted, demolished them, madę love to them -
Spencer crouched amazed, contemplated them with
adoration.
His attempts at tearing off the stiff post-Victorian
corset, his Blakean belief that inspiration comes from
God so it is an obligation to follow it, his courage to
turn his vision into reality, and the very intensity of
that vision, his preoccupation with the rejected and
the discarded, make him much morę contemporary than
the dates of his birth and the traditional critical
approach suggest. He can be seen along Freud and
Bacon - not competing with them, but supplementing
their view of human body and human condition.
At the same time, his ‘primitivism and naivety’,
brought up to dismiss him, are his strengths. In his
book ‘The Art Called Primitive’, Aleksander
Jackowski provides the following descriptions of the
artists ‘standing apart’: ‘In their life, their art and
personality interpenetrate in the way not to be found
with the professional artists. There is a close
relationship between them and their work. [...] What
is crucial for their art is their personality, following
the inner impulse, being a law unto themselves. At the
same time they seem indifferent to art movements and
fashions. [...] There is also a type of naivety that is [...]
a lyricism, tenderness, and childlike delight at the
beauty of the world... They paint as they feel. What
reaches them from the outside world is nothing to be
compared with the power and wealth of their inner
life.’ Stanley Spencer fits this description very well,
as most of the greatest artists of the 20th century do.
Art in the service of ideology and visions of progress
fades with time; what endures is the very personal, if
somewhat naive - and that includes the work of Stanley
Spencer.
The following works by Stanley Spencer: 2,3, 5,6,7, 8, 9
- © The Estate of Stanley Spencer. All rights reserved.
DACS 2001.
Stanley Spencer The Resurrection, Cookham - © Tatę,
London 2001
Hilda Spencer Self-portrait-© The Estate of Hilda Carli-
ne. All rights reserved. DACS 2001.
The author particularly wish to thank:
The Bridgeman Art. Library, London
Ferens Art. Gallery: Hull City Museums and Art. Gallery
Laing Art. Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne
Leeds City Art Gallery
The National Trust, Southern Region
Newport Museum and Art. Gallery
Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham
Tatę Gallery, London
Ulster Museum, Belfast
For their kind permission to reproduce the works in their
possesssion and providing photographic materiał.
Krzysztof Nosal
He upgraded them through turning them into
mythological characters, thus going in the opposite
direction to the traditional grotesąue, which
downgraded the reality it despised. His loving care of
all beings neglected and rejected includes rubbish, or
rather ‘unfairly discarded things’ and he admitted: ‘I
am on the side of angels and dirt. ’
The tonę of his paintings seems closer to the works
of the Polish painters Witold Wojtkiewicz and Tadeusz
Makowski, representatives of the lyrical grotesąue.
They often painted children, whereas Spencer looks
at the world with the childlike, or rather a childhood
eye; a characteristic of Balthus and Bruno Schulz too.
Spencer’s relationship to Bruno Schulz deserves
an in-depth examination - it does not end with a similar
physiąue and datę of birth. Spencer’s drawings of a
man walked on a leash or kissing a foot stretched out
by an alluring girl could be placed straight away in the
Book ofldolatry. There is a masochistic streak in both
of them; attachment to an ‘intimate space’, significance
of the father - a patriarchal figurę trailing behind the
rapidly changing world, still omnipresent...
What is the perception of Spencer’s art today?
Currently, we are witnessing a renewed interest in his
art, heralded by the inclusion of his works in prestigious
exhibitions: Les Realismes (Centre Georges Pompidou,
1981) and Alterity and Identity (Venice, 1995)
confirmed by his great retrospective in Washington,
Mexico City and San Francisco in 1998. Why is that
so? Does the idiosyncrasy and intimate character of
his art place him alongside the great individualities of
the 20th century? Has his art become morę popular
because of its self-absorbed approach, so fashionable
nowadays? Or maybe it is because his eclectic religious
views so smoothly fit into post-modernism? Maybe
his love for every creature and useless thing makes
him much better comprehended today? Or maybe his
art has resurfaced in the wake of the figurative painting
renaissance, led by such giants as Botero?
The exhibitionism of his art might be irritating.
When painting loved ones, treating painting like
a love gamę with the desired body, he resembles Bacon.
Spencer wrote to Peggy Andrews: ‘What you once
said that you felt you had some personal experience
with a person when you had drawn them, don’t you
think that experience was a wonderful sexual
experience?’ However, Bacon raped the bodies he
painted, demolished them, madę love to them -
Spencer crouched amazed, contemplated them with
adoration.
His attempts at tearing off the stiff post-Victorian
corset, his Blakean belief that inspiration comes from
God so it is an obligation to follow it, his courage to
turn his vision into reality, and the very intensity of
that vision, his preoccupation with the rejected and
the discarded, make him much morę contemporary than
the dates of his birth and the traditional critical
approach suggest. He can be seen along Freud and
Bacon - not competing with them, but supplementing
their view of human body and human condition.
At the same time, his ‘primitivism and naivety’,
brought up to dismiss him, are his strengths. In his
book ‘The Art Called Primitive’, Aleksander
Jackowski provides the following descriptions of the
artists ‘standing apart’: ‘In their life, their art and
personality interpenetrate in the way not to be found
with the professional artists. There is a close
relationship between them and their work. [...] What
is crucial for their art is their personality, following
the inner impulse, being a law unto themselves. At the
same time they seem indifferent to art movements and
fashions. [...] There is also a type of naivety that is [...]
a lyricism, tenderness, and childlike delight at the
beauty of the world... They paint as they feel. What
reaches them from the outside world is nothing to be
compared with the power and wealth of their inner
life.’ Stanley Spencer fits this description very well,
as most of the greatest artists of the 20th century do.
Art in the service of ideology and visions of progress
fades with time; what endures is the very personal, if
somewhat naive - and that includes the work of Stanley
Spencer.
The following works by Stanley Spencer: 2,3, 5,6,7, 8, 9
- © The Estate of Stanley Spencer. All rights reserved.
DACS 2001.
Stanley Spencer The Resurrection, Cookham - © Tatę,
London 2001
Hilda Spencer Self-portrait-© The Estate of Hilda Carli-
ne. All rights reserved. DACS 2001.
The author particularly wish to thank:
The Bridgeman Art. Library, London
Ferens Art. Gallery: Hull City Museums and Art. Gallery
Laing Art. Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne
Leeds City Art Gallery
The National Trust, Southern Region
Newport Museum and Art. Gallery
Stanley Spencer Gallery, Cookham
Tatę Gallery, London
Ulster Museum, Belfast
For their kind permission to reproduce the works in their
possesssion and providing photographic materiał.