Representations of everyday life: L. S. Lowry and the landscape of memory in postwar Britain

Representations

Volumn 65, Issue , 1999, Pages 121-150

  Waters, Chris ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 64949146024     PISSN: 07346018     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/rep.1999.65.1.01p0035q     Document Type: Review

References (149)

1. Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives (London, 1986), 142
2. Steedman is referring here to John Berger's 1966 essay, "Lowry and the Industrial North" (1966), reprinted in his About Looking (London, 1980), 87-95
3. On the importance of her project see Joseph Bristow, "Life Stories," New Formations 13 (Spring 1991): 113-31
4. Philip Dodd, "Lowryscapes: Recent Writings About 'the North,'" Critical Quarterly 32, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 17
5. Guardian (London and Manchester), 14 June 1993, sec. 2, 1
6. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Stephen Rendall (Berkeley, 1984), xiii
7. Alan Woods, "Mr Lowry: Community, Crowds, Cripples," Cambridge Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1981): 20
8. For biographical details see Shelley Rohde, A Private View of L. S. Lowry, rev. ed. (London, 1987)
9. Allen Andrews, The Life of L. S. Lowry, 1887-1976 (London, 1977)
10. Michael Leber, "L. S. Lowry," in L. S. Lowry, ed. Michael Leber and Judith Sandling (Oxford, 1987)
11. Rohde, Private View, 54-56
12. Andrews, Life, 18-19
13. Woods, "Mr Lowry," 9-10
14. Manchester Evening News, 3 September 1979, 6, in Lowry Papers, Salford Art Gallery and Museum; material drawn from these press clippings are hereafter noted "LP"
15. Frank Whalley, "Masterpieces in His Spare Time," Manchester Evening News, 18 August 1976, in LP
16. Julian Spalding, Lowry (Oxford, 1979), 6
17. Edwin Mullins, "The Lonely Life of L. S. Lowry," in L. S. Lowry, 68-69
18. Lowry quoted in Harry Hopkins, "L. S. Lowry Sees Beauty Through the Smoke," John Bull, 16 November 1957, in LP
19. Salford City Reporter, 31 December 1931
20. quoted in Rohde, Private View, 135
21. John Rothenstein quoted in Marina Vaizey, "'Will It All Last...?'" in L. S. Lowry, 88
22. Letter to Lowry from the Finance Division of the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC), 31 December 1942, in Lowry File, Imperial War Museum Archives
23. On the WAAC, see Meirion Harries and Susie Harries, The War Artists: British Official Art of the Twentieth Century (London, 1983), chap. 32
24. Maurice Collis, The Discovery of L. S. Lowry (London, 1951), 12
25. Michael Leber and Judith Sandling, "The Public Collections," in L. S. Lowry, 94
26. Leber, "L. S. Lowry," in L. S. Lowry, 36
27. David Frost, David Frost: An Autobiography (London, 1993), 416-17
28. Vaizey, "'Will It All Last ... ?'" 84
29. Peter Watson, "Hats Off to Lowry," Observer (London), 12 March 1995
30. "Lowrys Fetch Double Price," Guardian, 24 March 1995, 4
31. Manchester Guardian, 30 October 1921, in LP
32. Sunderland Echo, 23 September 1942, in LP
33. James Dudley, "Fire and Brimstone," Daily Worker, 7 October 1953, 2
34. Howard Spring, In the Meantime (London, 1942), 71
35. Howard Spring, Fame Is the Spur (London, 1940), 580
36. F. D. Klingender, "The Paintings of L. S. Lowry," Our Time 4, no. 9 (April 1945): 8-9
37. Fred Ball quoted in Rohde, Private View, 105
38. Howard Spring, "The World of L. S. Lowry," The Saturday Book 17 (1957): 228
39. Berger, About Looking, 89
40. Mervyn Levy, Painters of Today: L. S. Lowry, A.R.A. (London, 1961), 9; see also 5
41. Levy was insistent on this image: see also his The Paintings of L. S. Lowry: Oils and Watercolours (London, 1975), esp. 18-19, 23
42. See F. D. Klingender, Marxism and Modern Art (London, 1943), esp. 10-12, 48-49
43. Levy, Painters of Today, 12
44. "Beauty in Industry," I. C. I. Magazine, August 1943, 240, in LP
45. David Carritt, "Study in the Studio" (no periodical title listed on clipping), 28 December 1959, in LP
46. Berger also considered Lowry's work "specifically English"; About Looking, 90
47. Maurice Collis, "Art: L. S. Lowry, Victor Pasmore, and Others," Time and Tide 24, no. 9 (February 1943): 167
48. Collis, Discovery, 4
49. Rothenstein quoted in A Tribute to L. S. Lowry (Eccles, Eng., 1964), 15
50. on the Osbourne Gallery exhibition, see Laurence Stephen Lowry, 1887-1976: A Catalogue of the Salford Collection ..., ed. Frank Mullineux and Stanley Shaw (Salford, Eng., 1977), 7
51. See Kenneth Clark, "Constable, Prophet of Impressionism," in Art in England, ed. R. S. Lambert (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1938), esp. 40, 42
52. T. W. Earp, "Painting," in The English Genius: A Survey of the English Achievement and Character, ed. Hugh Kingsmill (London, 1938), 285
53. Eric Newton, "Lancashire Translated," Sunday Times (London), 18 February 1945, in LP
54. See also Michael Howard, introduction to L. S. Lowry: Works From Public and Private Collections (Stalybridge, Eng., 1983), 6
55. Spalding, Lowry, 3-4
56. Peter Fuller's Modern Painters: Reflections on British Art, ed. John McDonald (London, 1993), 103-4
57. For an elaboration of these themes, see Terry Morden, "The Pastoral and the Pictorial," Ten-8 12 (1983): 18-25
58. Malcolm Chase, "This Is No Claptrap: This Is Our Heritage," in The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia, ed. Malcolm Chase and Christopher Shaw (Manchester, 1989), 128-46
59. Ian Jeffrey, The British Landscape, 1920-1950 (London, 1984), esp. 7-13
60. and, of course, in general, Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York, 1973)
61. H. V. Morton, In Search of England (London, 1943), 186
62. Edmund Vale, North Country (London, 1937), 39, 41
63. William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral: A Study of the Pastoral Form in Literature (1935; reprint, Harmondsworth, 1966), 14
64. Eric Newton, "A Lancashire Artist" (February 1939)
65. reprinted in Eric Newton, In My View (London, 1950), 98
66. Tribute to L. S. Lowry, 6 (G. B. Cotton), 16 (Hugh Scrutton)
67. T. G. Rosenthal, "L. S. Lowry: An Unclassifiable Genius," Studio International 172, no. 883 (November 1966): 233
68. See also Tilly Marshall, Life with Lowry (London, 1981), 156-57
69. Mervyn Levy, interview on Kaleidoscope (Radio Four), 23 February 1976, in National Sound Archives, recording LP37012, band 3
70. M. G. McNay, in Tribute to L. S. Lowry, 9
71. Many others have noted this paradox. See in particular, Randolph Langenbach, "The Challenge Facing Oldham," in Satanic Mills: Industrial Architecture in the Pennines, ed. Marcus Binney et al. (London, 1978), 11
72. John Rothenstein, Modern English Painters: Lewis to Moore (1956; reprint, London, 1976), 84
73. Richard Cork, "Lowry and the Toy-Town Illusion," Evening Standard (London), 9 September 1976, 22
74. John Read, "Artist into Film," Studio 155, no. 780 (March 1958): esp. 66, 68, 91
75. "L. S. Lowry: The Industrial Artist," directed by Philip Thompson (1977), British Film Institute
76. Salford City Reporter, 8 October 1976; 12 November 1976, in LP
77. Shelagh Delaney, "L. S. Lowry," Studio 162, no. 821 (September 1961): 106
78. "Observer Art Offer. Signed by Lowry," Sunday Observer Magazine, 1972, in LP
79. "Observer Art Offer. Two Signed Lowrys," Sunday Observer Magazine, 25 November 1973, in LP
80. L. S. Lowry. Lithographs (catalog from Ganymed Original Editions), in LP
81. "Lowry Waits," Manchester Evening News, 8 July 1970, in LP
82. "Lowry Signed Prints," advertisement in Observer Review, 25 July 1976, in LP
83. Pat Gilmour, "Prints and Reproductions," Arts Review 25, no. 6 (24 March 1973), 164-65
84. Obituary (by Shelley Rohde and Richard Lay), Daily Mail (London), 24 February 1976, in LP; telephone interview with John Mainstone of Mainstone Publications, 15 August 1994
85. Interview with the manager of the Salford Gallery shop, 3 August 1993
86. "He Wrote History with a Brush," Manchester Evening News, 8 September 1976, 11, in LP
87. Patrick Dunleavy, The Politics of Mass Housing in Britain, 1945-1975: A Study of Corporate Power and Professional Influence in the Welfare State (Oxford, 1981), 1
88. John English et al., Slum Clearance: The Social and Administrative Context in England and Wales (London, 1976), 38-40
89. R. L. Greenall, "The Social Conscience and the Development of Social Welfare in Salford," in Salford: A City and Its Past, ed. Tom Bergin et al. (Salford, 1975), 122 (figures are drawn from 121-22)
90. H. B. Rodgers, "Manchester Revisited: A Profile of Urban Change," 27
91. and S. Millward, "Housing Renewal in the Inner City," 83-88, both in The Continuing Conurbation: Change and Development in Greater Manchester, ed. H. P. White (London, 1980)
92. Town of Salford, Town and Country Planning Act, 1947: Development Plan (Salford, 1957), 4, 8
93. Norman Dennis, People and Planning: The Sociology of Housing in Sunderland (London, 1970), 249
94. J. B. Cullingworth, "Social Implications of Overspill: The Worsley Social Survey," Sociological Review 8, no. 1 (1960), 77-96
95. The study is flawed in its conclusions, however, insofar as it did not consider the significant number of people who actually returned to Salford. For a study of Salford redevelopment between the wars that also cautions against nostalgia for the older, working-class communities, see Ann Hughes and Karen Hunt, "A Culture Transformed: Women's Lives in Wythenshawe in the 1930s," in Workers' Worlds: Cultures and Communities in Manchester and Salford, 1880-1939, ed. Andrew Davies and Steven Fielding (Manchester, 1992), 74-101
96. B. T. Robson, "The County Housing Market," in Continuing Conurbation, 94
97. Salford Official Guide, 1980 (Gloucester, Eng., 1980), 15 (for figures, see 48)
98. Charles Taylor, "Alienation and Community," Universities and Left Review 1, no. 5 (Autumn 1958): 18
99. N. Dennis, "The Popularity of the Neighbourhood Community Idea," Sociological Review 6, no. 2 (1958): 197
100. Shirley Baker, Street Photographs: Manchester and Salford (Newcastle upon Tyne, Eng., 1939), 9
101. Edward S. Casey, Remembering: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), 186
102. Walter Benjamin, "A Berlin Chronicle," in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York, 1978), 50
103. Casey, Remembering, 206
104. See also David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985), 238-49
105. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore, Md., 1984), esp. 136, 139, 151
106. For some useful thoughts on this subject, see John Russell, "How Art Makes Us Feel at Home in the World," New York Times, 12 April 1981, sec. 2, 1, 37
107. Gladys Engel and Kurt Lang, "Recognition and Renown: The Survival of Artistic Reputation," American Journal of Sociology 94, no. 1 (July 1988), 79-109
108. and especially Susanne Küchler and Walter Melion, "Memory, Cognition, and Image Production," in Images of Memory: On Remembering and Representation, ed. Küchler and Melion (Washington, 1991), esp. 1-9
109. N. C. Colquhoun and Harold Palmer, "Pictorial Art, Viewed from the Standpoint of Mental Organization as Revealed by the Excitatory Abreaction Techniques of Psychiatry," Journal of Mental Science 99, no. 4 (January 1953): 136-43
110. Jeff Sawtell, "Lowry and Class Contradictions," Artery, Winter 1976-77, in LP
111. Woods, "Mr Lowry," 11
112. Peter Davies, A Northern School: Lancashire Artists of the Twentieth Century (Bristol, Eng., 1989), 181
113. Terry Lovell, "Landscapes and Stories in 1960s British Realism," Screen 31, no. 4 (Winter 1990): 363-64
114. Caroline Tisdall, "Sticking Point," Guardian, 4 September 1976, 6
115. Sawtell, "Lowry and Class Contradictions," 18
116. Marianne Debouzy, "In Search of Working-Class Memory: Some Questions and a Tentative Assessment," History and Anthropology 2, no. 2 (October 1986): 278
117. See also Popular Memory Group, "Popular Memory: Theory, Politics, Method," in Making Histories: Studies in History-Writing and Politics (London, 1982), 205-52
118. Joanna Bornat, "The Communities of Community Publishing," Oral History 20, no. 2 (Autumn 1992): esp. 26
119. They include Wallace Brereton, Salford Boy (Salford, 1977), Bridging the Years: A History of Trafford Park and Salford Doch as Remembered by Those Who Lived and Worked in the Area (Salford, 1992)
120. Edward Williams and Elizabeth Cass Williams, Within a Mile of Dockland It Started (Gibraltar, 1988)
121. and the following works, all published in Swinton (Manchester) by Neil Richardson: Emily Glencross, Breakfast at Windsor: Memories of a Salford Childhood, 1914-1928 (1983)
122. Richard Heaton, Salford, My Home Town (1982)
123. Elsie Oman, Salford Stepping Stones (1983)
124. Arthur Potts, Whitsters Lane: Recollections of Pendleton and the Manchester Cotton Trade (1985)
125. Jack Preston, Memoirs of a Salford Lad (1983)
126. Jean M. Sant, To Be Continued ..., or, "Can I Have My Pictures Money, Mam?": Childhood Memories of Salford(1985)
127. Mavis Hermione Sapple, A Salford Childhood(1982)
128. and Barbara Vaughan, Growing Up in Salford, 1919-1928(1983)
129. In order quoted: Vaughan, Growing Up, 3
130. Bridging the Years, 62
131. Sapple, Salford Childhood, 5
132. Brereton, Salford Boy, 50. It has been pointed out to me that the very nature of such oral history projects demanded this focus on the past, resulting in works that differ structurally from the classic autodidact narrative. While this is indeed the case, I would argue that it is not only the form of reminiscence that is responsible for the temporal rupture on which I focus here, but also the context in which these reminiscences were collected, namely the massive social dislocation that resulted from postwar development
133. Heaton, Salford, 4
134. Williams, Within a Mile of Dockland, 1
135. Brereton, Salford Boy, 54
136. Barrie Sturt-Penrose, "L. S. Lowry: A Man of His People," Nova, August 1966, 29
137. Sawtell, "Lowry and Class Contradictions," 19
138. James Hall, "Not a Simple Man," Guardian, 18 July 1994
139. Woods, "Mr Lowry," 3
140. Davies, Northern School, 32, 180-81, 193
141. Alfred H. Body, Old Road: A Lancashire Childhood, 1912-1926, Recalled by Ruth Johnson (Didsbury, Manchester, 1974), viii
142. "An Interview With L. S. Lowry," Bolton School Magazine 1965, 40, in LP
143. See also Noel Barber, Conversations With Painters (London, 1964), 18
144. Levy, Paintings of L. S. Lowry, 22
145. Marshall, Life With Lowry, 213-14
146. Cork, "Lowry and the Toy-Town Illusion," 22
147. McDonald, Peter Fuller's Modern Painters, 104
148. For further information see www.thelowry.org.uk
149. Waldemar Januszczak, "Lowry's Life Class," Guardian, 28 October 1987, in LP