The artistic side of the Fifth Beatle
Aug 22 2008 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post
Vicky Anderson talks to Stuart Sutcliffe’s sister about a new exhibition of his work
A MAJOR retrospective of the work of Stuart Sutcliffe has gone on display in the city this week.
Focusing on the accomplishments of Sutcliffe the artist, rather than his notoriety as a former Beatle, it shows a number of examples of his paintings as a student at Liverpool School of Art, alongside his later work in Abstract Expressionism as he developed his style.
Three years in the planning, it has been made possible through the loan of dozens of his works from the Sutcliffe estate, held by his younger sister, Pauline.
Although there have been a number of small exhibitions of the artist’s work in the city over the years, this is the biggest retrospective staged in Liverpool in 40 years.
“I think, over the years, Stuart has come to represent some kind of romantic ideal,” Pauline says.
“First of all, he was beautiful looking, secondly he was enormously talented, and thirdly, he was extremely young when he died, and that’s why I think he has been taken to people’s hearts.”
Sutcliffe went to Park View primary school, in Huyton, and Prescot Grammar School before joining the Liverpool School of Art and meeting John Lennon.
The rest, as they say, is Liverpool history.
The original “Fifth Beatle”, Sutcliffe was a member alongside Lennon – first known as Johnny and the Moon Dogs, then The Silver Beatles, before settling on the name that stuck.
He became the bass player by fluke, after buying his instrument with money he earned selling one of his paintings in the John Moores exhibition in 1959 – beating friend Rod Murray, who was making a guitar by hand (which can be seen in the exhibition), to the post.
Sutcliffe is synonymous with The Beatles’ Hamburg heyday, where they toured in the early 1960s.
After a second tour, he stayed in Germany after falling for photographer Astrid Kirschherr and studied for a Masters in art at the city’s art college, where he was tutored by pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi.
Always considered something of a tortured, haunted soul, he died of a brain haemorrhage there, aged just 21.
The retrospective marks the first special exhibition for the new Victoria Gallery & Museum, which has only been open to the public since July, following an £8.6m restoration of the stunning red- brick building off Brownlow Hill.
Of the work, curator Matthew Clough says: “They taught a lot more technically in those days, and students would spend a while finding their own style by copying other people.
“You can see in his early abstract work how he is trying to explore that language and what he wanted to do with it.
“The Abstract Expressionism work, while quite unusual to be doing in Europe at the time, wasn’t totally original, it was a movement that came out of America.
“We have done a lot of shows of people related to the School of Art, and it seemed quite a good thing to do for 2008, as there hasn’t been a show of his work in the city for some time.
“In early 1961, he tried to enrol for a teaching diploma at the School of Art, but they wouldn’t accept him – not because he wasn’t any good, but because they felt his direction lay as an artist rather than a teacher.
“How his career would have progressed is a great unanswered question because he died so young.”
Frustratingly for aficionados and collectors, the majority of Sutcliffe’s work is untitled, but one of the coups of the exhibition is a series of abstracts from his late Hamburg stage.
Liverpool University has purchased two original Sutcliffes during the sourcing of the exhibition, but almost everything on display has come from his estate, courtesy of the artist’s sister Pauline, who now lives in New York and will be coming over to Liverpool next week to officially launch the exhibition.
Explaining why she agreed to get involved with the exhibition, she says: “It was a curious mixture of nostalgia for our home town that came at a moment when the university was putting all the plans in place for the refurbishment and re-opening of the gallery.
“We had to wait until the building was ready, but I couldn’t not do this, it was such a wonderful opportunity.
“To have been involved with something for a very long time and see all the hard work that everybody has put into it, I am really looking forward to walking in and seeing it.”
Some personal effects of Sutcliffe’s, including a college scarf, cartoons and membership cards to Liverpool music clubs, including the Jacaranda, as well as other long-gone haunts, are also on display to give a little more of a flavour of the artist’s Liverpool life.
A catalogue to accompany the exhibition, which will be available next week, features a collection of writings from a variety of personal and academic sources, including Astrid Kirschherr, Sutcliffe’s girlfriend at the time of his death, to pop journalist Jon Savage.
THE Stuart Sutcliffe Retrospective is now on at the Victoria Gallery & Museum until January 31, 2009, Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm.
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