{"id":333,"date":"2019-09-02T10:23:13","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T09:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=333"},"modified":"2019-09-02T10:23:14","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T09:23:14","slug":"salford-art-and-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2019\/09\/02\/salford-art-and-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"SALFORD: ART AND SOUL"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When actor Timothy Spall brought to life one of Britain\u00b4s favourite\nartists, painter JMW Turner,  in the 2014\nfilm Mr. Turner, he awakened public interest in Margate, a town so often at the\ncentre of Turner\u00b4s work. Now, as Spall embarks on another role interpreting the\nlife of another nationally revered artist, the town of Salford, at the centre\nof what is sometimes known as Lowry-land, is hoping for a similar boost in its\ncultural status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a time when our Sidetracks And Detours all across the arts<\/em> have recently looked at the significance of\nstatues of sporting icons, like Nat Lofthouse and Freddie Trueman, we now hear\nthat there are plans to install Lowry-style steel figures in public locations\naround Salford. The idea to do so is that of local councillor Stephen Coen, who\nspoke to The Guardian newspaper recently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

( see https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2019\/jun\/16\/lowry-home-town-salford-hopes-film-boost-timothy-spall<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong>)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The councillor said that \u00b4Salford is increasingly a creative hub and\nLowry\u2019s unique view of the city and the region still resonates locally and\ninternationally.\u00b4 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cllr. Coen feels that L. S. Lowry \u00b4captured the working-class industrial\nheritage\u00b4 of the area, and says that tapping in to the region\u00b4s creative sector\ncould help bring aspects of his work to the public in many different ways. With\nfootball such a huge cultural part of this area of Manchester, and with Salford\nCity currently enjoying their first season ever of football league status, a\nstrategic placement of a copy or representation of Lowry\u00b4s Going To The Match\n(now one of the world\u00b4s most expensive paintings) might be seen as a great way\nof celebrating that fact, and drawing the gaze of the nation to Salford.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is already a modern theatre and art gallery named after the\nartist. The Lowry was built twenty odd years ago as part of the massive\nre-gentrification of the Salford Quays that created hotels, shopping malls and\nnew BBC studios. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theatre \u00b4stars\u00b4 in the closing scenes of Mrs. Lowry And Son, and can\nsurely look forward to a new stream of visitors. In fact Julia Fawcett, the\ngallery\u00b4s CEO, suggests there could be a tribute to the film carried in the\nvenue\u00b4s permanent exhibition, LS Lowry, The Art And The Artist. That would be\nappropriate, as more than forty years after his death there is still a feeling\nof permanence about the artist and his work. With this prestigious building\ncarrying his name, the famous \u00b4pop\/folk\u00b4 hit by Brian and Michael about the\n\u00b4matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs\u00b4 as the characters in his works\nbecame known, proposals to show him on new bank notes while his works now sell\nfor millions and now this bio-pic telling his story  lowry is part of not only the Salford\nlandscape but also part of the fabric of the whole country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The director of the film is Adrian Nobel who believes that, like all\ngreat art, Lowry\u00b4s work is powerful enough to continually change perceptions\nand help us see the world differently. Adrian is a former director of The Royal\nShakespeare Company and, when speaking of \nhow art offers the opportunity to let us look at things again, says\n\u00b4there is a kind of morality in the way Lowry does this.\u00b4 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that immortality bestowed by the use of the present tense, by the\nway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, some residents believe that the Local Authority has not\ndone enough to fully exploit the attention Lowry\u00b4s work could bring to the\narea. A family living on the very street, Station Road, where the artist and\nhis mother lived in a terraced house, are raising funds themselves to purchase\na bronze statue of Lowry for their front garden. There are complaints that the\nlocal council have not done enough to commemorate Lowry\u00b4s early life and place\nof work, whereas in Mottram, up in nearby Longendale, there has long been a\nstatue of Lowry sitting on a bench looking out over the hills. It was here that\nLowry spent the \u00b4retirement\u00b4 of his later life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Lowry And Son, the film, adapted from a play by Martyn Hesford,\nalso stars Vanessa Redgrave playing the mother, shown here, as so often\nperceived, as overbearing on a son with whom she lived in the claustrophobic  environment of a small house purchased in\n1908.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
L.S.LOWRY artist<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Lowry, who worked most of his life as a rent collector, was actually\ntutored by a French impressionist artist called Adolphe Valette, even though\nMrs. Lowry disapproved of her son dabbling in the arts. He would paint at\nnight, after she had fallen asleep, and although his palette had only a limited\nnumber of colours he would use both the hairy and sharp ends of his brush as\nwell as his fingertips to create more subtle hues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The director confesses that Lowry remains \u00b4a riddle in may ways\u00b4 whilst\nacknowledging that he tried to develop the notion, in the film, that Lowry\nmight have found some artisitic freedom in that tiny attic, and when walking\nthe streets of Salford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the death of her husband Elizabeth Lowry became ill and bed ridden\nand Lowry cared for her up to her death in 1939 which was before his work had\ngained any recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adrian Noble believes the relationship between mother and son prevented Lowry\nfrom properly sharing his art during her lifetime, and even when he was\nfunctioning almost as her full time carer she was still doing and saying much\nto dissuade him from following his vision. Noble says Lowry\u00b4s is \u00e1n\nextraordinary story of someone, so original and gifted, hidden from the worlk\nfor such a long time.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christened Laurence Stephen, LS Lowry was actually born in Stretford and\nspent his early childhood in the middle class area of Victoria park in Rusholme.\nHe was twenty two years old before financial problems for his parents meant a\nmove to Pendlebury, which he at first hated and detested. However the \u00b4look\u00b4 of\nthe people there, and their characteristics peculiar to that environment slowly\nbegan to form his artistic obsession. The landscape and skylines of factories\nand chimneys became the backdrop he would constantly seek to re-capture or to\nre-create on canvas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lowry\u00b4s work was not all of matchstalk figures, of course. The\nexhibition gallery in the eponymous silver metalled theatre and gallery houses\nsome of the more contoured pencil sketches of rural, if industrialised, vistas.\nI remember how fascinated I was by these works when given a guided tour of the\nexhibition centre by a friend and fellow writer. John Siddique http:\/\/www.johnsiddique.co.uk\/<\/a> was serving there at the time as\npoet in residence, and his identification of the tiny smudges of colour,\ninvariably red, in these sketches and his own obvious love of the artist raised\nmy own awareness of a local artist and national treasure I had until then ignored\nfor more than forty years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author of the original play grew up only a couple of streets away\nfrom Lowry\u00b4s home and the director of the film the play inspired believes the\nscript has perfectly caught the attitude of the regional dialect, and he too\nwould like to see more local recognition of the artist\u00b4s talent and perception,\nbelieving there remains a snobbery about Lowry\u00b4s representations of working\nclass life, particularly in the arts world<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film portrays Mrs. Lowry as a lonely widow wondering if the\nworld will ever remember she and her son even existed,  once they are dead and their house has been\nforgotten. Whether Lowry really did reassure her that it would all live on his\npaintings, and whether or not she believed him if he did so, is surely the\nstuff of conjecture. What is certain, though, is that Lowry\u00b4s work so perfectly\ncaptures and frames that same smoky, sooty air of the twentieth century Salford\nthat was so well remembered in words and music by another \u00a8son of\nSalford\u00b4.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was in 1949 that Ewan MacColl (father of Kirsty who would\nalos grow up to be a great songwriter) told us how he met his love \u00b4by the gas\nworks wall\u00b4 in that Dirty Old Town. The song was  actually written for a play based on the\nregion called Landscape With Chimneys, which could also still serve as an\numbrella title for Lowry\u00b4s works. The song later became a staple diet of the\n\u00b4folk revival of the nineteen sixties and seventies, being recorded by the\nlikes of The Dubliners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A line about the smell of \u00b4spring on the Salford wind\u00b4 was often\nmis-translated by club singers, live and in the recording studio as being of\nspring on the \u00b4sulphered wind\u00b4 but the words about the \u00b4old canal\u00b4 and other\n\u00b4beauty spots\u00b4 firmly associate the lyric to MacColl\u00b4s home town. It is a\nPogues\u00b4 version of the song, that usually includes a haunting and evocative\nharmonica piece, that accompanies the players of Salford City as they now run\nout to play in a more rarified atmosphere of Salford than that recalled in MacColl\u00b4s\nwork. Salford has also been captured in earlier films such as Hobson\u00b4s Choice\nand in literature in the classic novel Love On The Dole and more recently in\nThe Sound Of Loneliness by Craig Wallwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We at all across the arts have brought with us to Lanzarote our\nown memories of Salford. My wife (and now photographer !) worked with the NHS\nSalford Clinical Commissioning group and I have happy memories too of playing\nthe Black Lion Folk Club. We can both remember the building and the opening of\nThe Lowry Gallery And Theatre and the bridge that blew in the wind across the\nwater to the towering stadium of Old Trafford. The Lowry building, too, rises\nto great heights and my first impression of it was how surreal that building,\narchly shadowed in subdued lighting, and its seemingly metal exterior gleaming\nin the daylight sun, and inside being of labryntine corridors and twisty staircases\nto its several theatre spaces, art galleries and merchandise stores. It became\nthe venue for some great concert and my first visit there was to see Janis Ian\nin concert. To see thousands of people walking to a theatre that was bathed in\nred and blue shading on a dark night, with the lights of what previously had\nbeen a waterfront wasteland but was now The Lowry Hotel felt surreal and yet, somehow,\nstill strangely Lowry-like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, this new release of Mrs. Lowry And Son is bound to\nre-awaken interest in Lowry\u00b4s paintings which, with each \u00b4picture\u00b4 telling a\nthousand words, serve as an encyclopaedia offering a colourful history of a\ncity often only viewed in black and white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs Lowry & Son<\/em>  is now on general\nrelease in cinemas across the UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When actor Timothy Spall brought to life one of Britain\u00b4s favourite artists, painter JMW Turner,  in the 2014 film Mr. Turner, he awakened public interest in Margate, a town so often at the centre of Turner\u00b4s work. Now, as Spall embarks on another role interpreting the life of another nationally revered artist, the town of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}