Michael James Andrews

Michael James Andrews (born October 30, 1928 in Norwich , † July 19, 1995 in London ) was a British painter .

Life

Michael Andrews was born in Norwich , England , the second child of Thomas Viktor Andrews and Gertrude Emma Green . When he was 18, he started a Saturday oil painting course at the Norwich Art School. From 1949 to 1953 he studied art at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. Andrews belonged to the first generation of the group of artists at the School of London along with Francis Bacon , Lucian Freud , Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff . While in the period after the Second World War the best-known artists turned away from painting and instead opted for other artistic possibilities, the association remained almost unaffected by those new movements in booming art forms. They all stuck to their belief in the special importance of figurative painting from the start. Although they all differed from one another stylistically, they were not only united by a passion for the genre of painting, but also by the tradition of depicting the human figure and its surroundings.

1949 to 1958

Between 1949 and 1953 Andrews studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London under the direction of the famous artist William Coldstream . His most important early works include August for the People (1952) and A Man who Suddenly fell over (1952). When he exhibited at Helen Lessores Beaux-Arts Gallery in London in 1958, his work A man who suddenly fell over was bought by the famous Tate Gallery , after which Andrews gained greater fame.

Portraits

Some portraits also belong to Michael Andrews' Œvre. In addition to portraits of friends like Tim Behrens and John Deakin , he also made some self-portraits. He also deals with studies of the heads of various pop stars of the 1960s, such as that of Arthur Brown from 1968 with the title Study of a Head for 'Lights' No. 3 . But this is a rather small number of portraits that he created in the course of his career as an artist.

1962 to 1969: "Parties"

In his early years as an artist, Andrews was very involved with social groups. This creative phase of the 1960s runs under the name of the parties. The most important example here is The Colony Room I , created in 1962. You can see groups of different characters who are Andrew's friends and acquaintances who are in the trendy Colony Room Club on Dean Street in Soho. Pictured from left to right are Jeffrey Bernard, John Deakin , Henriette Moraes, Bruce Bernard, Lucian Freud , Muriel Belcher, Francis Bacon , Ian Board and Carmel. The Colony Room I. serves as the official image of the School of London. Also, The Deer Park (1962) is a representation of various characters, whose theme is the social behavior and its interactions. The characters in the work are based on various real photographs of people from show business, film and literature, from the past or the hereafter. Marilyn Monroe , Brigitte Bardot , Ian Fleming and also the poet Arthur Rimbaud are depicted in the work. Andrew's painting was also inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni's 1961 film “ La Notte ”. The most important works in his party series include The Colony Room I. (1962), The Deer Park (1962), All Night Long (1963–64) and Good and Bad at Games (1964-68). In the latter two, Andrews was inspired by Francis Bacon, who at the time was addicted to the triptych as a form of representation.

His firm adherence to the figurative as well as his preference for group compositions are characteristic of Andrews from the beginning. He puts different people - often friends or relatives - in an everyday context. Andrew's affinity for group representation is particularly noticeable in his party series in the 1960s, in which the main aim is to depict individual people in their natural environment and to connect them with one another. The portrayal of the informal attitudes of individual groups, such as in Andrew's best-known work The Colony Room I, often misleads the viewer into the fact that this is a very important topic for Andrews. Because these show his concerns about their formal relationship with one another. Social confrontations and how their characters change in the process - how everyone plays their role - are the main themes of his early creative phase.

1970 to 1975: "Lights"

In the five years between 1970 and 1975, Andrews worked on a new series of paintings using a balloon as the main character. Lights was the name given to this series of just seven works. Andrews was inspired by Arthur Rimbaud's poem "Les Illuminations" for the title . Andrews is no longer interested in the figurative, human representation itself. Because man is no longer directly painted, but still accessible to us as a silent observer of this scene or as a passenger of a balloon floating over water or land. For Andrews, the balloon serves as a metaphor for the self. Lights VII: a Shadow is the most reduced but most successful work in his small series. In 1974, he exhibited Lights, mostly using acrylic paint with a spray gun, at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery.

1977 to 1981: "School"

In the 1970s, Andrews began again to limit his interests and main subject to the behavior of different groups. In this case, however, it is less about that of people during social events, it is more about how people, animals etc. in general come together and behave in different groups. In School IV: Barracuda under Skipjack Tuna (1978), Andrews depicted each and every fish depicted in its unique and shimmering colors. He put great effort into the various refractive scale coats of the fish. Although each individual creates their own unique shimmer and they are all different, they are all the same. For Andrews the scaly skin of the fish was like a kind of uniform and reminded him of the uniform clothing that various communities form and represent as a unit. For him it was a connection between fish and humans, for Andrews recognized that the habits of people in groups were very similar to those of fish in schools. His work Melanie and Me Swimming (1978–79), in which he is shown swimming with his daughter (* 1970), belongs to this group of pictures in which Andrews studied the behavior of schools of fish in his own aquarium at home . In this series, Andrews presented, illustrated and combined various representations of water, swimming and, on the other hand, the connection of individual individuals into a group.

1976 to 1986: "The Scottish Landscapes"

In the late seventies, 1975, Andrews took a trip to the Scottish countryside. The formal gardens and surrounding hills and mountains of Drummond Castle in Perthshire inspired Andrews so much that he became involved with Scottish literature and history from then on. 25 almost photographic images were taken of the Scottish landscape . The focus is strongly on the idyllic, green landscape of Scotland and associated with a hunting scene. In general, the titles in this series, such as Alistair's Day: 2nd Stalk (1980) or Peter's Day, are about the person depicted in the foreground, with their weapons in sharp contrast to the idyllic nature and the running pack of animals in the background or middle distance stands.

1983 to 1989: "The Ayer Rocks"

Andrews started one of his last series with the famous, large-format portraits of Ayers Rock ( Uluru ). In October 1983 he went on a trip to Ayers Rock in Australia . This landscape inspired and influenced his further work. Andrews had discovered a subject of proportion, color, and relevance to the level of his occupation. This can be seen from the oversized dimensions of The Cathedral, North-East Face / Uluru (Ayers Rock) (1984–85), whose canvas measures a full 243.8 cm by 426.7 cm. With its shimmering surface, it creates a deceptively realistic representation of the hot, windy desert of Australia. The pictures are technically dazzling; full of radical stylistic variations. With meticulous photographic observation, he draws the Australian landscape with the most intimate details. However, this series falls very much off Andrew's grid. Because while the artist as a member of the School of London always remained faithful to the tradition of figurative painting in one way or another, this series is an exception in his work. For the first time it is not about figures of humans or animals, but only about the cultural property of the Aborigines in their unique beauty.

Late works

At the end of the 20th century some more abstract paintings of the Thames were made . During this creative phase he discovered a new freedom and skill to deal with oil paint. He started to work with a hair dryer to push the turpentine better over the canvas and to thin it out even more. In addition to the abstract depiction of the British river, Andrews goes back to his artistic roots. Not to the extent that we are used to, but here he fulfills through the representation of the six people who are in his work Thames Painting: the Estuary (Mouth of the Thames) (1994-95) on the banks of the Thames, again the tradition of figurative art. This series of Thames pictures were the last pictures Andrews looked at.

Michael Andrews died of cancer on July 19, 1995 in London at the age of 66.

Andrew's painting process

Working according to nature, as Andrews practiced it, was related to existentialism , also known as " agnosticism, " and was a major controversy of the 1940s and 1950s. Andrews not only took photographs, he even used stencils for various shapes. He mixed real elements such as people and places from a photograph or another painting with his memories. At Good and Bad at Games he even used screen printing for the first time to depict the background and combined it with stencils. In order to push the turpentine better over the canvas and to dilute it even more, Andrews began to work with a hair dryer on his River Thames pictures.

Michael Andrews was a very slow painter and created only a small number of approximately 95 paintings in his entire 45 year career as an artist. He rarely exhibited, shied away from the public and took a lot of time in his work. He only had solo exhibitions seven times. Often Andrews only painted one or two pictures in a year.

literature

• Dawn Ades: Figure and Place: Five Post-War Artists and Their Similarities. In: Susan Compton (Ed.): English Art in the 20th Century. Painting and sculpture. Munich 1987, pp. 87-97.
• Michael Andrews: The Delectable Mountain. The Ayers Rock Series and other Landscape Paintings. London 1991.
• Michael Andrews: The Scottish paintings, (10 August - 29 September 1991), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Edinburgh 1991.
• Michael Andrews: A London painting school. A school of London: six figurative painters. Düsseldorf 1987.
• Michael Andrews: Eight figurative painters, exhibition catalog Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, October 14, 1981 to January 3, 1982. New Haven 1981.
• Richard Calvocoressi: Michael Andrews. In: The Burlington Magazine. Volume 143, Issue 1184, pp. 709-711.
• Peter Fuller: Michael Andrews: Recent Paintings. In: The Burlington Magazine. Volume 128, Issue 1000, pp. 530-532.
• Alistair Hicks: The school of London - the resurgence of contemporary painting. Oxford 1989.
• Richard Shone: Glasgow and Edinburgh William Strang and Michael Andrews. In: The Burlington Magazine. Volume 123, Issue 935, pp. 116-120.
• Eric Westbrook: Two paintings by Michael Andrews. In: Annual Bulletin of the National Gallery of Victoria. Volume VII, Victoria, 1965, pp. 18-23.

Web links

• Michael Andrews 1928-1995 at tate.org.uk
• Michael Andrews on bbc.co.uk