Lowry and the painting of modern life

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Britain which seeks to put L.S. Lowry in an art historic context as well as showing some fascinating pictures.

The first couple of rooms looked at the genre from which Lowry came placing him alongside Monet and Seurat as social commenters recording modern life displaying his work next to other inheritors of this real life tradition such as Van Gogh and Pissarro. It made you look at the work with a different eye and forget the 1970s cliché which its last revival had made it. I did reflect on the fact that we seem to inevitably go back to Lowry in times of economic hardship.

The early works were by far the best and I loved the way the scenery and figures made you start to make up stories about what each character might be doing or feeling even the dogs! I was also interesting to read that Lowry had deliberately chosen his style if painting people as he felt real figures would have “broken the spell of my vision”.

The social commentary on the pictures was fascinating and set the pictures in context well. I loved the idea of having an old musical hall song playing about not paying the rent in one room although it did get a bit repetitive!

I did also start to have through about the way the pictures were framed and whether plainer frames, rather than the regional art gallery type fancy gold frame, would make us look at the pictures with a more modern eye rather. At times the gold frames seemed to be trying to make them old masters rather than quite vibrant art from the modern tradition.

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