CATALOGUE INTRODUCTION TO ‘CHRIS STEVENS’ Published by Smelik & Stokking Galleries www.smelikgalleries.nl In an interview several years ago, the poet Derek Walcot mused on the dilemma of being a black poet working within white Western conventions. In his youth, in the West Indies, he said, if a poet used any kind of fruit as part of an idea, it would invariably be an apple. Apples didn’t grow in the West Indies, but no one would dream of writing a serious poem about a mango. The painting of Kevin Hope in Donegal brings to mind these words. The question arises, what is the meaning of the painting depicting a working class black man. The painting does not seem to be making any overt point about anything. The subject is simply a closely observed image of a normal man, strong in arm, handsome in visage and dressed in the gear of the minute. One might see him in a pub anywhere in Britain. But in choosing to paint this subject, in this way, Stevens has played dangerously with the barriers, which continue to protect fine art practice from the rest of the world. Had he ‘Warholed’ or ‘Mapplethorped’ his subject, the image would have been an acceptable addition to the genre we all know. The fact that he used an idiom, which is at the heart of the Western tradition, without gimmickry or irony, makes it powerfully disorientating. As Stevens says, ‘Basically the issue is class.’ His use of black models, whilst obviously impinging on racial issues, ultimately refers to the most persistent theme in his work, the relationship of popular culture to the tradition of painting. The paintings contain an internal disjuncture, caused by a subject matter that, in class terms, is fundamentally alien to the mode and genre of depiction. Kids in jeans, t-shirts, bomber jackets, smoking, talking, and looking absolutely contemporary and wrapped in painterly brushstrokes. But the bringing together of these two worlds is not a conscious decision on the part of the artist; rather. Over a long period of time, he has simply married elements in his life that he has formerly kept apart. “I have a passion for pictures’ this indeed is what the Realism of the nineteenth century was really about. Courbet’s peasants, Monet’s St Lazare Station, Van Gogh’s Postman played on the disjuncture between their medium and their subject, celebrating the space between the two. Inevitably, their methods were appropriated into the art world, the space closed up by a thousand followers, but when they were fresh they served to emphasise the extent to which art practice was an isolated elite domain. The knowingness of the brushwork, the absence of anecdote or message, served to heighten the profile of the subject. The work of Pierre Bourdieu (Distinction; a Social Critique of the Judgement of taste, 1985) has shown us the extent to which class, and through this, education, utterly dictate our cultural outlook. From the food we eat, the clothes we wear, through to the art we appreciate (or ignore) class affects our vision. We are largely predictable, along class lines, as to what art we will or will not like. The middle classes, who invented the art of the twentieth century, from the golden age of the avant-garde through to the turgid eclecticism, which now stands for the avant-garde, have evolved highly developed codes, which dictate their various feelings about life and art. Few of them would accept that these codes exist, preferring rather to see themselves as free-floating individuals. Most of them, I would guess, find these paintings difficult. The banality of the moment, as with so much Dutch genre painting is evident in Stevens work. This will become magical. The vulgar normality will become enigmatic once the subject is no longer an everyday event. The reference to the Dutch leads me to an important facet of the paintings in that they have a close relationship with an earlier history of art. The use of perspective, profiles, dark=grounds, tonal modelling and painterly brushwork are barely of this or the last century. Stevens confirms this: ‘the paintings are about art…but they are not eclectic. Draughtsmanship is the vehicle, but the image is the key of the work. Draughtsmanship is the enabler. I teach people to draw in the manner of Raphael, and not in the manner of Picasso. However, Picasso is probably my favourite artist. I go to the National gallery a hell of a lot’. He agrees that he goes to the National gallery in the way Lucien Freud described treating it like a visit to the doctor. One has a painting with something wrong with it and one needs to find a cure. This precludes self-conscious reference to the past, which bestows status but little else, and gets to the heart of problem solving n painting. As with the paintings of the early eighties of football fans, thee latest paintings are not scenes in any depictive sense, rather they are staged situations, tableaux-vivants almost, which bring together disparate objects and people in order to make a statement. Everything happens against blank backdrops, depriving us of immediate context and making the characters function as generalised comments of their kind. The paintings avoid the triteness that this generalised atmosphere might engender, due to their origins as specific portraits. As artificial as the situation is, we cannot escape the subjects as individual people. ‘I always paint people I know. I know everybody in the paintings. I choose strong paintings. Mainly young people who don’t know what they are yet. I don’t go searching for these people.’ Chris Stevens is an artist who can pierce through the isolated nonsense of so much contemporary painting and actually makes something which challenges our sensibilities. I am not suggesting that most artists don’t care about the world; neither would I want to shift toward a highly politicised profile in art. He does not see his work as overtly political. Rather I would like to see painting shift significantly in order to encompass the world that non-artists live in. When one walks around the National gallery, it seems amazing that such a request would ever need making. Paul Greenhalgh Director of the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich

CATALOGUE INTRODUCTION TO ‘CHRIS STEVENS’

Published by Smelik & Stokking Galleries

www.smelikgalleries.nl

In an interview several years ago, the poet Derek Walcot mused on the dilemma of being a black poet working within white Western conventions. In his youth, in the West Indies, he said, if a poet used any kind of fruit as part of an idea, it would invariably be an apple. Apples didn’t grow in the West Indies, but no one would dream of writing a serious poem about a mango.

The painting of Kevin Hope in Donegal brings to mind these words. The question arises, what is the meaning of the painting depicting a working class black man. The painting does not seem to be making any overt point about anything. The subject is simply a closely observed image of a normal man, strong in arm, handsome in visage and dressed in the gear of the minute. One might see him in a pub anywhere in Britain. But in choosing to paint this subject, in this way, Stevens has played dangerously with the barriers, which continue to protect fine art practice from the rest of the world. Had he ‘Warholed’ or ‘Mapplethorped’ his subject, the image would have been an acceptable addition to the genre we all know. The fact that he used an idiom, which is at the heart of the Western tradition, without gimmickry or irony, makes it powerfully disorientating. As Stevens says, ‘Basically the issue is class.’ His use of black models, whilst obviously impinging on racial issues, ultimately refers to the most persistent theme in his work, the relationship of popular culture to the tradition of painting. The paintings contain an internal disjuncture, caused by a subject matter that, in class terms, is fundamentally alien to the mode and genre of depiction. Kids in jeans, t-shirts, bomber jackets, smoking, talking, and looking absolutely contemporary and wrapped in painterly brushstrokes. But the bringing together of these two worlds is not a conscious decision on the part of the artist; rather. Over a long period of time, he has simply married elements in his life that he has formerly kept apart. “I have a passion for pictures’ this indeed is what the Realism of the nineteenth century was really about. Courbet’s peasants, Monet’s St Lazare Station, Van Gogh’s Postman played on the disjuncture between their medium and their subject, celebrating the space between the two. Inevitably, their methods were appropriated into the art world, the space closed up by a thousand followers, but when they were fresh they served to emphasise the extent to which art practice was an isolated elite domain. The knowingness of the brushwork, the absence of anecdote or message, served to heighten the profile of the subject.

The work of Pierre Bourdieu (Distinction; a Social Critique of the Judgement of taste, 1985) has shown us the extent to which class, and through this, education, utterly dictate our cultural outlook. From the food we eat, the clothes we wear, through to the art we appreciate (or ignore) class affects our vision. We are largely predictable, along class lines, as to what art we will or will not like. The middle classes, who invented the art of the twentieth century, from the golden age of the avant-garde through to the turgid eclecticism, which now stands for the avant-garde, have evolved highly developed codes, which dictate their various feelings about life and art. Few of them would accept that these codes exist, preferring rather to see themselves as free-floating individuals. Most of them, I would guess, find these paintings difficult.

The banality of the moment, as with so much Dutch genre painting is evident in Stevens work. This will become magical. The vulgar normality will become enigmatic once the subject is no longer an everyday event.

The reference to the Dutch leads me to an important facet of the paintings in that they have a close relationship with an earlier history of art. The use of perspective, profiles, dark=grounds, tonal modelling and painterly brushwork are barely of this or the last century. Stevens confirms this: ‘the paintings are about art…but they are not eclectic. Draughtsmanship is the vehicle, but the image is the key of the work. Draughtsmanship is the enabler. I teach people to draw in the manner of Raphael, and not in the manner of Picasso. However, Picasso is probably my favourite artist. I go to the National gallery a hell of a lot’. He agrees that he goes to the National gallery in the way Lucien Freud described treating it like a visit to the doctor. One has a painting with something wrong with it and one needs to find a cure. This precludes self-conscious reference to the past, which bestows status but little else, and gets to the heart of problem solving n painting. As with the paintings of the early eighties of football fans, thee latest paintings are not scenes in any depictive sense, rather they are staged situations, tableaux-vivants almost, which bring together disparate objects and people in order to make a statement. Everything happens against blank backdrops, depriving us of immediate context and making the characters function as generalised comments of their kind. The paintings avoid the triteness that this generalised atmosphere might engender, due to their origins as specific portraits. As artificial as the situation is, we cannot escape the subjects as individual people. ‘I always paint people I know. I know everybody in the paintings. I choose strong paintings. Mainly young people who don’t know what they are yet. I don’t go searching for these people.’ Chris Stevens is an artist who can pierce through the isolated nonsense of so much contemporary painting and actually makes something which challenges our sensibilities. I am not suggesting that most artists don’t care about the world; neither would I want to shift toward a highly politicised profile in art. He does not see his work as overtly political. Rather I would like to see painting shift significantly in order to encompass the world that non-artists live in. When one walks around the National gallery, it seems amazing that such a request would ever need making.

Paul Greenhalgh

Director of the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich