Kitaj Paints Still Beauty

Like Freud, Kossoff, Auerbach, RB Kitaj, the sixth artist in the Getty London Calling show, was Jewish, but for him, especially as he grew older, it became an abiding subject, not just a religion. Kitaj was born in Ohio but ended up living in London, where the Marlborough Gallery represented a number of the figurative artists. He was also great pals with Hockney who is not technically part of this group though his subjects were also figurative at the time.

He loved cinema, and baseball. He was married twice, the first time to an American art student in Vienna, and the second time to Sanda Fisher, also an American artist.

Kitaj was much influenced by Degas. A retrospective at the Tate in 1994 received poor reviews due his use of text in the galleries, (what would they make of today's art?) and he abandoned London for LA after the death of his wife which he blamed on the turmoil the exhibition had aroused.

In LA, where his son Lem Dobbs the writer lived, he was able to find some measure of peace surrounded by family.

Though Kitaj used collage in his paintings, it is two pastels that I find remarkable. In The Rise of Fascism,1975, at the Tate, Kitaj said, "The central grotesque bather is the fascist. The bather at the left is the beautiful victim. The right hand bather is the ordinary European watching it all happen. A bomber appears in the upper left corner (not visible in this poor IG crop please forgive) which will cross the English Channel and bring an end to it all one day." (Hello Tate, please put this painting back on view!)

Two London Painters, 1979 is at Lacma (Hello Lacma, please put this painting back on view!). It's Auerbach and Fisher reading, contemplating, friends. I think it's so moving.

Kitaj committed suicide in 2007 in LA. He was 75.

Frank Auerbach and His Work Have Staying Power

The marvelous, indomitable Frank Auerbach is still alive and working. His recent show at Luhring Augustine showed that this member of the School of London/London Calling exhibition who was born in Berlin in 1931 has extraordinary staying power.

He was sent to England as part of the Kindertransport at age 7 and never saw his parents who were killed in the camps again.

This image of his friend and colleague Leon Kossoff from 1951 shows how thick as thieves the two were. They met at Borough Polytechnic and became each other's family.

Like Bacon, Freud and Andrews, he found favor with critics John Berger and David Sylvester (father of Cecily Brown).

Later he would come to a brighter palette as in Portrait of JYM from 1961. But in the portrait of Kossoff, the line from a painter like Walter Sickert is clearer. It's haunting.

Michael Andrews Depicted His Own Life

Leaving aside Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, the most well known members of the London Calling group for the moment, let me share a little about Michael Andrews whose work is deserving of more attention.

Andrews was a student of Freud's at the Slade. While still at art school, he painted A Man Who Suddenly Fell Over. It's surreal and whimsical but realistic all at once. He was only 24. He won the Rome scholarship, but, unusually, returned to London mid stream, unable to settle in Italy. He needed his posse.

Andrews went from painting small groups to larger, more social groups and back again. One of which is the group at Colony Room 1, 1962, which was a drinking club favored by his pals. Party scenes and social gatherings drawn from his own life as well as newspaper images had begun to preoccupy him.

His recollections of a typical evening at the club included images of John Deakin (who had taken the wonderful photo at Wheeler's of the group, back to viewer), Henrietta Moraes who sat for Bacon and Freud (in blue dress), Freud (in dark coat facing out), Bacon (seated) and other friends. He thrived on this social interaction.

Andrews said, " "I think we thought our responses to people and circumstances and life were more important than nursing some systematic idea of what painting was all about.
Courtesy Estate of Michael Andrews

The Well of The School of London

The British painters in the London Calling Tate/Getty exhibition did not spring from nowhere. There had been a great tradition of figurative painting prior to their collective. These earlier painters had not only focused on the body however, but also drew from more unusual sources of under represented groups, or the more intimate, in some cases, darker side of life.

Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer, David Bomberg, Graham Sutherland as well as the usual suspects like Picasso and Matisse were all influential.

Walter Sickert, German-born but a long time resident of Britain, here represented by La Hollondaise, 1906, was a painter who captured reflective nudes in domestic interiors as well as a series on Jack the Ripper and who also worked from photographs. At the time he was quite well known and though Bacon later claimed only a scant connection, in his earlier student days he had been an admirer. The use of photographs was something Bacon would come to rely on almost exclusively.

One hates to generalize, but the London Calling 'group' in becoming fast friends and inspirations for each other, also voraciously consumed both the well known artists of the previous generations and the more obscure nooks and crannies of everyday life which was then a hodge podge of post war strife and new growth.