Monday 26 March 2012

Sickert nonsense


L'Affaire de Camden Town

Here are my comments as written in response to a Guardian article about a new ballet currently being created in London. You can see the condensed version on the paper's website. This is what I originally wrote.I should add the name of Stephen Knight to the trio who are determined to associate Sickert with various muders. It was Knight in particular who helped to spread Gorman's story.


Dear Editor,

I object to Judith Mackrell parading a farrago of unmitigated tosh  in her article "Dance of Death" concerning a new ballet which refers to the artist Walter Sickert's supposed fascination and possible involvement with various lurid murders. The sources behind the stories, particularly  Patricia Cornwell and Joseph Gorman, the self-styled "Hobo Sickert", have been comprehensively discredited on more than one occasion .
Matthew Sturgis's biography of the artist is conclusive enough for most historians. That Sickert had some interest in the Ripper and Camden Town Murders is unquestioned, but there is no substantial evidence for any 
serious connection with the Royal family or any known murder.

 I object also to the ignorant  and sensationalist account of Sickert's working methods.The  description of a touch of paint which implies a"dagger-like approach to the woman's genital area" suggesting  hatred of the feminine is just crude and stupid.  Sickert's working methods tended to the deliberate and meditated .The implication that because a brushstroke is put down quickly
 it also has some emotional and in this case violent content is extremely suspect. The artist often quoted his own father's advice to paint well and quickly and himself frequently worked on a kind of production line system
where paintings were put away for some time to dry between stages. That Sickert's shaggy facture is mistaken for some kind of aggressive intent is naive in the extreme.

Titles were almost interchangeable with Sickert. There is no real evidence of deliberate obscurity - more likely a poverty of  imagination - or could there be an attempt at disconcerting his intellectual sparring partner Roger Fry?Not enough attention has been paid to the artist's whimsy. He evidently thought that canvases should have titles, and in Sickert's case they seem to be deliberately literary.To an unbiased eye the  painting known as The Camden Town Murder could  as readily be titled, What shall we do for the rent, Ennui or Jack Ashore - all titles used by Sickert.His father worked as an illustrator, and Sickert loved the work of professionals from earlier generations.


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