Steve_Bamlett_blog

A dissertation proposal

How and why does the visual portrayal of figurative groups in landscapes in the post-1939 art of Keith Vaughan relate to changing representations of male ‘homosexuality’ in Britain?

 [Agnew’s (1990) Keith Vaughan: 1912-1977 Catalogue London, Agnew’s.

Austin/Desmond Fine Art (ud.a) Keith Vaughan: Catalogue of Paintings, Gouaches, Watercolours and Drawings 1936-1976 Sunninghill, Berks., Austin/Desmond Fine Art.

Austin/Desmond Fine Art (ud.b) Keith Vaughan: 1912-1977 Catalogue London, Austin/Desmond Fine Art.]

This group of catalogues offer evidence of the range of pictures with inferable extent of public access. As with Julian Lax (2000), Hepworth, A. (2007), Osbourne & Samuel (2011-19 inclusive) & Cruse (2013).

Austin, J.L. [Ed. Urmson, J.O. & Warnock, G.J.] (1961) Philosophical Papers Oxford, The Clarendon Press

The most accessible source of Austin’s invention of the performative as a feature in linguistics is Ch. 10 ‘Performative Utterances’ (pp. 220-239). For basic of performative in queer theory as modified by Butler and Sedgwick (2003).

Barber, N. (1964) Conversations with Painters London, Collins

The interview with Vaughan (pp. 69-82) is useful because of the fact that the painter identifies his life and career in terms of differences between a more communal life in a Neo-Romantic Soho and the time after ‘the change that took place in my work in the fifties’ (p.81) in which he abandoned planned composition in favour of developing ‘the painting within its own terms as it went on’ (p.82).

Beechey, J. & Stephens, C. (2012) Picasso and Modern British Art London, Tate Publishing

Provides data on context of Vaughan’s contemporaries and their debt to Picasso but NOT Vaughan’s, who is not mentioned at all. Sets the context too relating to the critical neglect of Vaughan which prevailed until quite recently. A mention.

Butler, J. (2011) Bodies That Matter: On the discursive limits of “sex” London, Routledge Classics Ed.

I need further time here to determine if this is the correct text to study for Butler, alongside Sedgwick’s (2003:3-9) critique of the performativity thesis but on my beginning acquaintance it may be.I think I might concentrate on Ch. 8 (‘Critically Queer’ pp. 169-185).

Clark, A. & Dronfield, J. (2015) Queer Saint: The Cultured Life of Peter Watson who shook Twentieth-Century Art and Shocked High society London, John Blake

Collateral information on a contemporary self-conscious group of gay male artists of the period and a major patron. May not be explicitly used. Still thinking. See also Wright (1998). The most modern account of the alliances and commissions, as well as a model of one kind of class-based gay group in social action. Used comparatively in Chapter 1 with Turner (2016).

Cocks, H. (2016) ‘Conspiracy to corrupt public morals and the ‘unlawful’ status of homosexuality in Britain after 1967’ in Social History 41 (3), 267-284, Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2016.1180899 (Accessed 17/06/19).

The compromised status of homosexuality in the law before and after 1967 relates to concepts of homosexuals in a social group as opposed to pathologised individuals. See Tatchell (2017) for easier version. This can be related to interest in male groups in Vaughan, an interest he may also have adopted from André Gide’s novels.

Cruse, C. (Ed.) (2013) Keith Vaughan: Figure and Ground: Drawings, Prints and photographs Bristol, Sansom & Company Ltd.

See Agnews (1990) to Austin/Desmond Fine Art (ud.b), Julian Lax (2000), Hepworth, A. (2007), Osbourne & Samuel (2011-19 inclusive) & Cruse (2013)..

Graham, P. & Boyd, S. (Ed.) (1991) Keith Vaughan 1912-1977: Drawings of the Young Male London, GMP Publishers Ltd.

Evidence of the more open interest in Vaughan as a primarily gay artist whose main contribution is in the representation of the male nude. The introductory essay is by the semi-open gay author and art historian, Edward Lucie-Smith, writing here for Gay Mens Press was a novelty of the period that I remember well. Needs placing VERY briefly (see Lucie-Smith 1998).

[Hastings, G. (2011) ‘Essay’ in Osbourne, P. & Samuel, S. (Eds.) Keith Vaughan: Gouache, Drawings & Prints London, Osbourne Samuel Ltd..

Hastings, G. (2015) ‘Essay’ in Osbourne, P. & Samuel, S. (Eds.) Keith Vaughan: Centenary Tribute London, Osbourne Samuel Ltd..

Hastings, G. (2012) Drawing To A Close: The Final Journals of Keith Vaughan Pagham, The Pagham Press.

Hastings, G. (2016a) Paradise Found & Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex Pagham, Pagham Press.

Hastings, G. (2016b) ‘Introduction to the Nine Assemblies’ in The Keith Vaughan Society Website. Available at: http://www.thekeithvaughansociety.com/2016/11/25/introduction-nine-assemblies/ (Accessed 27/04/19)

Hastings, G. (2017a) Awkward Artefacts: The ‘Erotic Fantasies’ of Keith Vaughan Pagham, The Pagham Press with The Keith Vaughan Society.

Hastings, G. (2017b) ‘Essay’ in Osbourne, P. & Samuel, S. (Eds.) The Romantic Impulse: British Neo-Romantic Artists at Home and Abroad 1935-1959 London, Osbourne Samuel Ltd.

Hastings, G. (2019) ‘Essay’ in Keith Vaughan: Myth, Mortality and the Male Figure: Paintings/ Gouaches/ Drawings London, Osbourne Samuel Ltd.]

Through these texts a view of the relationship between homosexuality and art is amongst other ideas (cognate to this and otherwise) against which my own view is formed by critical appreciation of that still-forming view. Probably the dominant voice on the artist currently and Chair of the Keith Vaughan Society.

Hepworth, A. (2007) Keith Vaughan: Figure and Landscape Bath, North East Somerset Council

See Agnews (1990) to Austin/Desmond Fine Art (ud.b), Julian Lax (2000), Osbourne & Samuel (2011-19 inclusive) & Cruse (2013)..

Hepworth, A. & Massey, I. (2012) Keith Vaughan: The Mature Oils 1946-1977: A commentary and a catalogue raisonné Bristol, Sansom & Company Ltd.

A key source of data on the oil paintings, including all those known in 2012 with illustrations. A source of readings and bibliographic information also throughout and in Chs 2-3 especially.

Hopkins, J. (1994) Michael Ayrton: A Biography London, Andre Deutsch

Of minor importance in dating Neo-Romanticism as a movement in England (p.126).

[Ironside, R. (1948, originally published as pamphlet 1947) ‘Painting since 1939’ in Haskell, A.L., Powell, D., Myers, R. & Ironside, R. Since 1939: Ballet, Films, Music, Painting. London, Readers Union and the British Council, 145-184.

Ironside, V. (2013) ‘Robin Ironside, painter and writer, 1912-1965’ Available at: http://www.robinironside.org/about-robin-ironside.html (Accessed 21/06/19)]

Ironside’s summary of painting since 1939 follows ideas in Vaughan’s own 1944 ‘View of English Painting’ to a degree (especially on Sutherland and except for very different views on the Pre-Raphaelites) and ends with a section on ‘The Rising Generation’ naming the source of Vaughan’s ‘mannerism’ as the Neo-Romantics which Ironside helped to define under that name, ‘Moore, Sutherland and Piper’ (Ironside 1948:180f.). Ironside, who became a sub-director of the Tate (Ironside 2013) saw himself as part of this group of the ‘rising generation though he doesn’t say so here out of modesty. His painting remained Neo-Romantic throughout his life and contrasts with the more dense forms devised by Vaughan to portray the human figure but he admired Vaughan and others in his essay for being as he described them ‘self-taught’. That he too was gay may or may not be important.

‘Julian Lax’ (2000) Keith Vaughan: Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings, Gouaches, Drawings and Lithographs London, Julian Lax.

See Agnews (1990) to Austin/Desmond Fine Art (ud.b), Hepworth, A. (2007), Osbourne & Samuel (2011-19 inclusive) & Cruse (2013).

Keith Vaughan Society (2019a), The. Website of the society is continually updated and run by Gerard Hastings. Its Homepage is available at: http://www.thekeithvaughansociety.com/ (Accessed 22/06/19)

 Keith Vaughan Society (2019b) ‘Thoughts on André Gide: Letter to an unidentified editor’. This was added by the Society without further bibliographic detail – required for dating these thoughts and the letter. Available at: http://www.thekeithvaughansociety.com/2018/09/14/thoughts-andre-gide/ (Accessed 22/06/19)

The short letter (or extract) positions Vaughan as heavily influenced by Gide and particularly in relation to the fluidity of the latter’s positions on matters theological, philosophical and artistic. What he sees throughout is ‘acceptance of the contradiction inevitable between the rational desire for order and the chaos of man’s sensory awareness of life’. The letter is undated. Hastings (2019 personal communication) writes, ” I’m afraid the letter is undated! Maddening, I know. I only have a typed copy which came from KV’s archive vis Prof John Ball.”  

Keith Vaughan Society (2019c) ‘Keith Vaughan & John Berger: The Artist and Society: Correspondence from The Statesman 1954’. This was added by the Society without more precise dating. Available at:  http://www.thekeithvaughansociety.com/2018/09/14/keith-vaughan-john-berger/ (Accessed 23/06/19)

The exchange of letters positions Vaughan as committed to art that makes a  statement based on the ‘artist’s personal structure’. Berger responds that such a position reduces art ‘difficulties of communication’ like obscurity or inhibition. Vaughan’s answer is worthy of Gide: ‘attachment and the absolute can be achieved only through particular and intimate experiences.’  He goes on, in answering ‘Mr Bland’ to also say that the artist needs the technical & formal truths achieved through movements such as Impressionism and Cubism: ‘And the only wat I can see in which an artist can now be deprived of their usage is by a society which lays down laws (for political reasons) on what it considers to be ‘virile’ painting.’ The last point and the source of the command to be ‘virile’ needs more thought!

[Lehmann, J. (1955) The Whispering Gallery: Autobiography I London, Longman, Green & Co.

Lehmann, J. (1960) I Am My Brother: Autobiography II London, Longmans.

Lehmann, J. (1966) The Ample Proposition: Autobiography III London, Eyre & Spottiswoode

Lehmann, J. (1976) In the Purely Pagan Sense: A Novel Colchester, Blond and Briggs Co. Ltd].

These four volumes constitute the full autobiography – with the more explicit sexual material fictionalised using the pseudonym Jack Marlow in the ‘novel’ published in 1976. Some persons are de-anonymised in Wright (1998) such as Michael Redgrave, an early lover. The ‘novel’ forms evidence of the discourse used to describe gay groups, especially employing the ‘queer-normal’ binary but its psychosocial class-based and changing political nature (and discourses) also present in the ‘owned’ three volumes. Vaughan is indexed plentifully in volumes II-III.

Martin, S., Butlin, M. & Meyrick, R. (Eds.) (2007) Poets in the Landscape: The Romantic Spirit in British Art Chichester, Pallant House Gallery

See Mellor (1987), Yorke (2000), Woodcock (2000), Martin et. al. (2007) & Moore 2007.

Medd, J. (2016) ‘”I didn’t know there could be such writing”: The Aesthetic Intimacy of E.M. Forster and T.E Lawrence’ in Helt, B. & Detloff, M. (Eds.) Queer Bloomsbury Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press pp. 258-275.

Both writers were of importance to the period in defining homosociality and Vaughan refers to both at different points in his journals. Not clear if it will be useful yet.

Mellor, D. (1987) A Paradise Lost: The Neo-Romantic Imagination in Britain 1935-55.London, Barbican Art Gallery

See Yorke (2000), Woodcock (2000), Martin et. al. (2007) & Moore 2007.

Meyer, R. (2013) ‘Inverted Histories: 1885-1979’ in Lord, C. & Meyer, R. (Eds.) Art & Queer Culture London, Phaidon Press Ltd.

A classic treatment of the parallel histories of LGBTQI+ communities and art, showing interactions. Minor reference in contextual descriptions.

Middleton, M. (1948) ‘Four English Romantics’ in Lehmann, J. (Ed.) Dust Jacket, design and endpieces by Keith Vaughan Orpheus: A Symposium of the Arts London, New Directions 1948 pp.107-113.

One of the 4 is Vaughan and Middleton characterises his subject as one wherein ‘man looms fitfully in the foreground, an oppressed being occupied in some inexplicable activity’ (p.111).  The identification of activity almost abstracted from purpose can be used. Given Vaughan’s prominent role in the first Orpheus publication, Vaughan’s awareness of this assessment can be assumed.

Moore, J.N. (2007) The Green Fuse: Pastoral Vision in English Art 1820-200 Woodbridge, Antique Collectors’ Club.

See Mellor (1987), Yorke (2000), Woodcock (2000), & Martin et. al. (2007).

Nahum, P. (2019) ‘Biography of Norman Basil Town (1915-1987)’ in Norman Basil Town – Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries [Online}. Page not directly accessible. Available by clicking Biography at http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/norman-basil-town/10918 (Accessed 14/06/19).

          Data on Town’s life including association with Vaughan.

Newby, P.H. (1947) Illustrated and dust wrapper by Keith Vaughan The Spirit of Gem London, John Lehmann

Primary source of illustrative artwork exempla and early male group pictures. See Twain (1947) and Rimbaud & Cameron (1949).

[Osbourne, P. & Samuel, S. (Eds.) (2011) Keith Vaughan: Gouache, Drawings & Prints London, Osbourne Samuel Ltd..

Osbourne, P. & Samuel, S. (Eds.) (2015) Keith Vaughan: Centenary Tribute London, Osbourne Samuel Ltd..

Osbourne, P. & Samuel, S. (Eds.) (2017) The Romantic Impulse: British Neo-Romantic Artists at Home and Abroad 1935-1959 London, Osbourne Samuel Ltd.

Osbourne, P. & Samuel, S. (Eds.) (2019) Keith Vaughan: Myth, Mortality and the Male Figure: Paintings/ Gouaches/ Drawings London, Osbourne Samuel Ltd..]

See Agnews (1990) to Austin/Desmond Fine Art (ud.b), Julian Lax (2000) & Hepworth, A. (2007).

Reed, C. (2011) Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas New York & Oxford, Oxford University Press.

          Self evident perhaps.

Rimbaud, A. (original French text) & Cameron, N. (facing trans) (1949) Illustrations (lithographic) and illustrated Dustjacket by Keith Vaughan) A Season in Hell/Une Saison en Enfer London, John Lehmann Ltd.

Primary source of illustrative artwork exempla and early male group pictures. See Newby (1947) & Twain (1947).

Salisbury, M. (2017) The Illustrated Dust Jacket 1920-1970 London, Thames & Hudson.

Source on Vaughan’s book illustration and design (and examples of the artwork) for John Lehmann.

Schmale, W. (2012) trans. Pepper, I. & Saunders, B. ‘Nakedness and Masculine identity: Negotiations in a Public space’ in Natter, G. & Leopold, E. (Eds.) Nude Men: From 1800 to the Present Day Munich, Leopold Museum & Hirmer, 26 – 35 .

For brief reference in dealing with representations of male nude in Chapter 2 (a sentence perhaps) but perhaps called on more if identity needs more discussion. The same could be true of other essays in this volume which I used in TMA02 in A843.

[Sedgwick, E.K. (1985) Between Men: English literature and Male Homosocial Desire New York, Columbia University Press.

Sedgwick, E.K. (Updated Ed. 2003) Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity Durham, US & London, Duke University Press.

Sedgwick, E.K. (Updated Ed. 2008) Epistemology of the Closet Berkeley, University of California Press.]

The major theorist of non-binarism as the core of queer theory and, originally, the focus on attacking the social structuration of norms (Following Foucault 19!!- !! inclusive), although Sedgwick’ identified her own work as feminist in theoretical intention originally. There is a development from her earliest work (1985) to her latest (2003) that will need to be summarised in introductory Chapter 1. Move is to re-emphasise in later work the role of ‘body’, ‘affect’ and ‘performance’ that I see as important in detailed work on Vaughan’s treatment of the embodied plasticity of art (to be explained).

Soby, J.T. (1935) After Picasso New York, Dodd, Mead & Co.(Facsimile Milton Keynes, Lightning Source UK Ltd)

The source of the term Neo-Romantic for European-American émigrés, Like Berman and Tchelitchew, and which book led to Minton and Craxton’s study of this trend in Modern Art and probably the import of the ‘Neo-Romantic’ label to the UK.

Spalding, J. (1984) The Forgotten Fifties: Catalogue and introduction of exhibition initiated by the Graves Gallery Sheffield Sheffield, Sheffield City Council.

This invaluable work contains reference to Vaughan’s (and Minton’s) short-lived association (perhaps deriving from Jankel Adler, another housemate of Minton & Vaughan, the depiction of figures that were associated (as with Prunella Clough more persistently[p.42]) with an interest in manual work and workers (p.26). It also has invaluable reference to the debate between Vaughan and John Berger over the purpose of art (Keith Vaughan Society 2019c). This debate appears to boil down to a difference of function in the depiction of assemblies of working men or men at work that hinges on the presence of whether action in painting is a political action or not. For Vaughan, Berger’s position was too simplistic (36-40). Berger (40) identifies Vaughan in 1956 of one of the artists who ‘still obstinately exist’ (as true artists).

Tatchell, P. (2017) ‘Don’t fall for the myth that it’s 50 years since we decriminalised homosexuality’ in The Guardian (Online) Tue 23 May 2017. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/23/fifty-years-gay-liberation-uk-barely-four-1967-act (Accessed 17/06/18).

          The issues in law adumbrated if Cocks (2016) too legalistic for a reader.

Tate film: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/keith-vaughan-2096/keith-vaughan-under-skin

Turner, J.L. (2016) The Visitors’ Book: In Francis Bacon’s Shadow: The Lives of Richard Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller London, Constable

Collateral information on a contemporary self-conscious group of gay male artists of the period. May not be explicitly used. Still thinking. See also Wright (1998). The most modern account of the alliances and commissions, as well as a model of one kind of class-based gay group in social action. Used comparatively in Chapter 1 with Clarke & Dronfield (2015).

Twain, M. (1947), Illustrations and illustrated Dustjacket by Keith Vaughan, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer London, Paul Elek.

Primary source of illustrative artwork exempla and early male group pictures. See Newby (1947) and Rimbaud & Cameron (1949).

Vann, P. (2014) ‘A Piece of Spiritual Machinery. The Work of Norman Town. October 2014: Associated Media: A chance discovery in a car boot sale reveals the brilliance of a forgotten English war artist’ in Cassone: The Online International Magazine of Art and Art Books. Available at: www.cassone-art.com/magazine/article/2014/10/a-piece-of-spiritual-machinery-the-work-of-norman-town/?prsc=perspectives (Accessed 14/06/19).

A Vaughan expert art-historian compares and contrasts Vaughan and Town as artists.

Vann, P. & Hastings, G. (2012) Keith Vaughan Farnham, Lund Humphries.

Views of Vann and Hastings on the importance of the sexual in the painting will be used critically as will the readings from this major at historical monograph on the painter.

[Vaughan, K. (1944) ‘A View of English Painting’ in New Writing And Daylight Winter 1943-1944 London, John Lehmann. 87-96

Vaughan, K. (1946) ‘At the Klee Exhibition’ in New Writing And Daylight 1946 London, John Lehmann.

Vaughan, K. (1966) Journals & Drawings 1939-1965 London, Alan Ross

Vaughan, K. (1985) ‘The Way We Live Now’ in The Penguin New Writing 1940-1950 London, John Lehmann. 39-41

Vaughan, K. (2010) Journals 1939-1977 London, Faber & Faber]

Primary sources for selective analysis in Chapter 2. These contain much of Vaughan’s thought about the role of social groups in human ‘life, thought and feeling’ and his view of art and the artistic process including some of his sources in the work of André Gide (not named but quoted in the Journals) and Freud. The essays prepared for John Lehmann annual publications make clear the alliances he favoured with the art of the past, and the present,in his early career when he depended more on patronage from Lehmann – and Watson. The relation of print to illustration is considered regarding Vaughan (1966) in Chapter 2.

Waters, C. (2013) ‘The homosexual as a social being in Britain, 1945-1968’ in Lewis, B. (Ed.) British Queer History: New Approaches and Perspectives Manchester & New York, Manchester University Press pp. 188-218.

Of major importance since it charted the discourses that produced the idea of the homosexual group capable of exerting a psychosocial force as opposed to the motif of the ‘isolated invert’ in early psychiatry / psychology. The group is specified by a ‘social turn’ in discourse as ‘a social problem’ before becoming the locus of positive social identity in the 1980s. There is a debate hence with Jeffrey Weeks (2012). Other important papers that might get a mention in this volume are by Laura Doan (pp.87-108) & Matt Houlbrook (pp.134-164).

Weeks, J. (2012) ‘Queer(y)ing the “Modern Homosexual”’ in Journal of British Studies 51 (3) pp. 523-539. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23265593 (Accessed 17/06/19).

This is a summary of critical thinking on the terminology related to the central debates about identity, performativity and binarism. It fuelled the debate between the combatants Weeks & Waters in Waters (2013), wherein Weeks holds out for the importance of ideas of queer identities in sexual politics, if in a nuanced way.

West, S. (2004) Portraiture Oxford, OUP (Ch 4 on ‘Group Portraiture’)

In Chapter 1 to set the context of the concept of the group portrait (there is a chapter with that title) briefly.

Woodcock, P. (2000) This Enchanted Isle: The Neo-Romantic Vision from William Blake to the New Visionaries Glastonbury, Gothic Image Publications.

See Mellor (1987), Yorke (1988), Martin et. al. (2007) & Moore 2007.

Wright, A. (1998) John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure London, Duckworth

The most modern life of Lehman for data on life and alliances and commissions, as well as a model of one kind of class-based gay group in social action. Used comparatively in Chapter 1 with Clarke & Dronfield (2015).

Wright, P. (ud) Keith Vaughan on Pagham Beach: Photographs and Collages from the 1930s London, Austin/Desmond Fine Art.

Primary visual and textual material for the photographic and collage-assembly early work based on the group of young men of mixed social class at Pagham. Used Ch. 1 & 2. With Hastings (2016a).

Yorke, M. (1988) The Spirit of Place: Nine Neo-Romantic Artists and their times London, Constable

Contains a chapter on Vaughan (pp255-284) but vital contextual material for the history of British Neo-Romanticism (more coherently explained than in Mellor 1987) and the ways in which Vaughan did and did not see himself as part of that ‘movement’ throughout his development. There is a legitimate interest in formal and compositional qualities which needs critically placing within the themes of my argument. Used alongside Mellor (1987), Woodcock (2000), Martin et. al. (2007) & Moore 2007.

Yorke, M. (1990) Keith Vaughan: His Life and Work London, Constable

The authoritative autobiography with Yorke (1988). Valuable data and readings on the sexual nature of the art that can be used alongside Vann & Hastings (2012) & Hastings (2011-2019 inclusive) to generate the current state of thinking on the sexual basis of the work to generate my own position.