The world of arts

Peter Lanyon and British art

Gwen Herat

I never thought much about British art nor its creators until Peter Lanyon came into focus and made me turn around. To begin with I am no disciple of contemporary or modern art let alone the ones done by Lanyon.

But with his vivid vivacity and self expression both in line and colour made me think twice of the morbid art that most British painters and their Masters have painted. What the British lack in painting, they make up in sculpture and performing arts such as music and ballet and here, I become their disciple.

As a boy, Lanyon used to be inspired by the local artists in their studios. They used to excite him and bring out the artist in him.

He discovered the places that were to be the source of his painting such as the furthest tip of Cornwall from the undulating coast road from St. Ives. While his father drove around, young lanyon captured the beauty of it all and stored them in his heart, almost never missing a point.

As he came to understand or experience the impact of what he was going to put on canvas, the character of each of his subjects provided his memory.

He was never dominated by what he saw but rather what he had stored away in his heart during childhood. This helped him conscious of the meaning of nature and its configuration in what he painted around Western Cornwall.

Though he insisted he was not an abstractionist but a landscape painter. I never found the truth in this though his landscapes are imbued with a root-like abstract quality. May be he extracted the energy from scenes with which he had personal rapport. To me, most paintings appeared flat as though he painted them aloft in height.

It took me months to study some of them and suddenly, it hit me right on the face. Lanyon served in the Royal Air Force from 1940 to 1945 in North Africa but it was short lived due to his migraine though he was scheduled to take up flying seriously in 1959.

The blurred and dizzy vision from above, may have caused a 'flatness' in some of his paintings. This is my theory and no critic has speculated on this theory. The dangers of war and the need for constant awareness and his increased sense of circumscription being a part of it and its influence, are distinctly captured in many of his paintings.

The Ruins of Capua bear witness for this outcome where he has strangely painted in shades of blues, greens and golden browns. Back in Cornwall after the war, Lanyon married and started a family.

He had more space to paint which he did. But with a long period being away abroad, naturally his paintings identified landscapes that did not belong to his environment. Paintings that followed were visibly abstract but it directed him to reflect his ideas to the almost universal move in England.

And Lanyon was unique in that he spoke of paintings in terms of the way it could describe the history and character of a place. In the world outside his domain, Lanyon did not entail the fantasy of life that is basically attached to the conscious mind of reality.

He was his own master and would dictate from within what he put down on canvas. He could churn the sound of music in his palatte but few would comprehend it no matter to what school of music one belonged.

I could find the rapturous, noisy strains of Tchaikovsky as well as the soft, haunting melodies of Beethoven in some of his paintings. If I tell this to the layman, he would think I am as crazy as Lanyon. These are some of his finer points that made me look up to British art and Lanyon made me find it.

He used colour symbolically. Red was danger, white and yellow sexual connotation while dark purple and scarlet, the smell of death.

Lanyon spent the first three months of 1953 in Italy on a scholarship awarded to him by the Italian Government and lived a short time in Rome. Later, he moved to the foothills of the Abruzzi mountains in the village of Anticoli Corrado.

After the Italian trip, Lanyon developed into one of the few great British colourists. One of Lanyon's interests in the Europa myth was triggered off by the white oxen he saw in the streets of Anticoli.

He was fond of Italy and her great art and its Masters. He spent a lot of his time in her art galleries. He had been introduced to Italian painting by Adrian Stokes after being in Italy during the war.

This trip offered him enormous fresh stimulus. He moved away from the vigourous rather strident execution of ideas and into more poised and complexed idiom. Lanyon also adored American painting and was influenced by De Kooning. But Lanyon's paintings were far less quicker and impulsive than Kooning's.

However, it was only after his second visit to New York that he further loosened himself and simplification of art was evident in his paintings. That is attributed directly to Kooning influence.

Peter Lanyon was born in 1918 at St. Ives and lived there apart from his boarding school and on war service. He died in 1964. He had very talented parents. They were extraordinary music people. Father was a composer and pianist as well as a photographer.

A man with wide interest, he opened out his house every Sunday evening to his friends to discuss arts and philosophy. He sent Peter to Clifton College where music master, Douglas Fox was his friend.

Peter Lanyon learned the piano but preferred to play his own improvisation than the works of well-known composers. His father saw a great future in Peter in the field of piano music but to Peter music was only a joy because art beckoned him passionately.

When he painted in black and white, he may have been inspired by the black and white notes.

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