Lowry's Dark Art

Behind the familiar images of factory workers and northern industrial city scapes that have made LS Lowry one of Britain's most easily recognised and frequently reproduced painters, there is a much darker, sadder group of work rarely seen by the public, the Observer reports. These bleak sketches and paintings include a series of disturbing and sexually deviant drawings that remained hidden until after the artist's death in 1976. Today the novelist and Lowry enthusiast Howard Jacobson is to give the annual lecture in honour of the painter at the Lowry Centre. He will argue that ignoring the bleak side of the artist's imagination has led to him being under-rated and misunderstood by many art critics. Jacobson is to call for Lowry's fetishistic, private drawings to be more widely shown. For Jacobson, the secret drawings of women in outlandish outfits and strange bondage positions are just part of his melancholy and tortured view of the world. Many of the erotic sketches show single female figures in bizarre and restrictive costumes and they commonly have either a hinted or an explicitly violent content. (For full source and article click the Headline). Irish Art