Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Artist who started drawing as a child and later apprenticed in calico print design.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:08How early in life was it your ambition to become an artist?
Not as I can remember. I should think I must have been at six or seven. When uh my father, each Friday night when he got paid, called at the Penny Bazaar … which was an early Marx and Spencer's, and brought me a drawing book. H we on one side there was an outline, and then the other side was a blank page. And I always used to fill in the blank page, but never fill in the outline. I hated it. Well, my father realized that he was wasting fifty percent of his capital outlay, so that he started to go to … the market and bring me home each week … a block of sugar paper … which they use for wrapping up sweets. And this is marvelous paper to draw on, rather like Japanese paper.
Presenter asks
0:56What did you do when you left school?
Well, I left school on my fourteenth birthday … There was no possibility of earning any living in Oldham, anything to do with drawing. In fact, my headmaster said this was nonsense, and that drawing and designing was a woman's job. Anyway, my father was a sensible man. And he answered an advertisement in the Manchester paper for a designer, a calico print designer, who wanted an apprentice. And he took me down and I showed this man a bunch of drawings and I was taken on. And unfortunately, he was born in Millhouse in Alsace, and this was in the middle of the war … and within about three months he was arrested as an enemy alien … and he was interned. The business collapsed.
Presenter asks
What was the first work you had [in London]?
I saw an advertisement in an evening paper … By the standard of the news for somebody that could do oil paintings. So I went to interview … I think it was the Lasky Corporation … the film people. And this chap produced a still photograph and he said, 'Can you make an oil painting of that?' And of course I said yes, sir, I needed the money … I'd never done oil painting before. So I brought some oil paints and the canvas and I did a painting of this, and they were pleased with it. And I got I think I got four pounds for it.
Presenter asks
8:12You've been quoted as saying that art unrelated to life is of no real interest. Do you agree?
Well, I think it must be. I think the trouble with art today, you see, is that it is decorative. It becomes a matter of taste. And I don't think art has anything to do with taste at all. Art is a method of communication, one of the first, earliest methods of communication.
Presenter asks
9:43If one piece of your work, and only one, were to be preserved for posterity, which piece would you select? Which one has come nearest to satisfying?
Oh, I think it will be the one I'm going to do tomorrow, obviously.
Presenter asks
10:43What main function apart from the exhibition hall and the academy itself does [the Royal Academy] fulfil today?
Well, for me, one of its chief functions is that it allows any artist in the country to show their work, artists who probably could never get a showing in Bond Street or any of the private galleries have sent to the Academy and get on the walls and price their paintings a hundred pounds, and sell it. They get a hundred pounds. There's no commission, it's absolutely free. It's a very democratic institution from that point of view.
“There was no possibility of earning any living in Oldham, anything to do with drawing. In fact, my headmaster said this was nonsense, and that drawing and designing was a woman's job.”
“I lived the life of a gentleman.”
“I don't think art has anything to do with taste at all. Art is a method of communication, one of the first, earliest methods of communication.”
“I think it will be the one I'm going to do tomorrow, obviously.”