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One Week with John Gulliver: Tilting at Windows - works on paper by artist Peter Howson
Published: 1 April 2010
Restoring my faith in art
IT was such an astonishing portrait in graphite of a young woman that I asked the artist Peter Howson how long she sat for him.
“Oh, she didn’t sit for me,” said Howson, a diffident, quietly spoken man, who looked as if he wanted to say more but thought better of it.
“I just saw her and sketched her on the spot,” he said. Howson had seen the woman on a trip to Israel.
Perhaps because I looked surprised, he produced a small A5 sketchbook from his jacket pocket and began to flick through it for me. I was mesmerised. The sketches, clearly made in the street, were so perfectly drawn, faces captured with delicate and spare strokes, that I realised they were complete works of art that could be exhibited on their own.
And that, in fact, is what Flowers Gallery in Hackney has done. Several of Howson’s sketchbook drawings are on display at a price of £600.
This exhibition of 82 works by Howson, one of Britain’s most eminent artists, should be seen if you want to understand what it means when it is said of particular artists, “they can draw”.
Some artists, like Francis Bacon, for instance, never learned to draw, and their works drip with this weakness.
Basically a figurative artist, Howson, now in his 50s, is supreme as a draughtsman.
The title of his latest exhibition, Tilting at Windmills, comes from an episode in Cervantes’ Don Quixote where he attempts to slay giants.
Howson has come through a lot in his life, confronted with his own demons of alcoholism and addiction. Perhaps in an unguarded moment, at the opening of his exhibition on Thursday, he told me that he had started to take to the bottle at the age of eight.
Tales abound in Glasgow, where he has a studio, and where he is painting a memorial to Scotland’s canonised martyr St John Oglivie at the city’s main Catholic church, that it took him many years before he came out of his addiction. When he did, his fame spread as an original artist.
He became a war artist in the Bosnian conflict, and has held dozens of shows throughout the world.
Though he appears to have come through the worst of the storm, he still needs help, suffering from Asberger syndrome. It is because of this that a Scottish court has appointed John McDermott as his guardian.
Would he mind if I mentioned this, I asked McDermott at the show? “No, but try and write about his paintings, not like the tabloids who only seem interested in his personal life,” he said.
It is because of his troubles that Howson has clearly found faith, and this can be seen in many of the religious works at the show. In a sense, you can say that he displays a quiet heroism, battling still with the after-effects of his old demons, and managing to shine through.
Going round the exhibition it soon becomes apparent that there is such a gulf between a wonderful figurative artist like Howson and the fashionable Damien Hirsts and Tracey Emins of this world.
• Tilting at Windmills, Peter Howson works on paper, is at Flowers, 82 Kingsland Road, Hackney, until April 24
Charlie and Bill flew a flag for integrity
I CAN only gasp at the encyclopedic research Piers Wauchope must have carried out for his book on the political history of Camden.
But a photograph in the book of three old Labour stalwarts – Tom Devine, Charlie Taylor and Phil Turner – raising the red flag at the Town Hall in 1983 took my eye.
Wauchope had already referred to the real-life wartime experience of the former leader Roy Shaw, but he could equally have written about Bill Budd’s days as a tankman in Normandy, as well as the heroism of Charlie Taylor, who had served in the merchant navy on ships taking weapons through the perilous waters to Murmansk.
Charlie, who died several years ago, was a real character. He was an alderman on St Pancras council, and later a watchdog on the Community Health Council carefully keeping an eye on our hospitals. But whenever he dropped into my office I would persuade him, with difficulty, I admit, to talk about his wartime exploits on ships that were dodging German submarines. Thousands of our seamen died in those convoys to Murmansk. We would also talk about his work as a printer on The Times in Gray’s Inn Road.
Am I being sentimental when I wonder that Camden Council would be a better authority today if there were more people with real-life experience, like Bill and Charlie, in the Town Hall chamber?
At the launch of Wauchope’s excellent book last week one name was on the lips of the old politicos: Patricia Hewitt, who had just been exposed by a TV sting as an ex-minister “on the make”.
Hewitt, who lives in Camden Town, was known personally by many of the guests.
What made her try and sell her ministerial contacts to the TV reporters acting as lobbyists?
She picks up £65,000 a year as an MP. Her husband, a judge, would earn something in excess of £100,000 a year.
So what made her do it?
“It can only be greed,” most of the guests thought.
“Greed, greed and greed!”
Come to think of it, why haven’t there been more stout-hearted men of principles like Bill Budd and Charlie Taylor in the Commons?
• Wauchope’s book costs £14.95 and can be bought at Waterstone’s in Camden or online from Shaw Books.
See review in next week’s New Journal
See review in next week’s New Journal
Sad story of librarians’ farewell party
I WOULD have dearly liked to have been able to tell readers about who said what at a farewell party held at Swiss Cottage library for six librarians.
Sad story of librarians’ farewell party
But the censors at the Town Hall got to work and made certain that the New Journal wouldn’t be welcome.
Apparently, the librarians didn’t want the Press present at a party where critical speeches were expected to be made about the controversial shake-up of libraries in the borough. I heard that council overseers impressed on the librarians that “confidentially clauses” in their contracts had to be honoured at all costs.
Years ago journalists were exuberantly welcomed at farewell parties for council officials, but that was before the introduction of contracts for Town Hall staff that forbade them from talking to the Press. It’s called progress!
It’s not such a jet-set lifestyle for cabin crew
YOU may think it’s a glamorous job, so what are BA cabin crew grumbling about?
Many years ago when I got to know one crew member, I thought the same.
But I soon realised the job had its drawbacks, apart from fairly low pay.
A woman I know, who has worked for BA for many years, earns about £24-25,000 a year, and for that she has to spend a lot of time away from her family.
After a one-day flight she is given two days off or so, and then it’s back home. When a close relative died, she had to be told by phone at her hotel in Montreal.
Most of time off abroad is spent getting over the flight.
Yes, there are family travelling perks, but they don’t add up to much annually.
She is a quiet woman, not at all interested in politics or unions, but BA’s hard-hearted attitude has infuriated her.
I was amazed to discover that she planned to join a picket line this week for the first time in her life.
What annoyed her was that cabin crew weren’t being paid even when they were genuinely sick during the striking days.
“There’s a colleague,” she told me, “who is in hospital and she is still not getting paid during strike days – what a cheek!”
I suppose Willie Walsh, who is paid a basic annual salary of £735,000 as BA’s chief executive, doesn’t care much about how the cabin crews feel.
But if they are as annoyed as the woman I know, he should realise he faces a hard and long battle.
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