End Of An Art Era

June 1 will be a melancholy day for many people, the Times reports, because it marks the end of the Piccadilly Gallery’s lease at 43 Dover Street, and, with it, the retirement of Godfrey and Eve Pilkington, doyen and doyenne of gallery owners, and the closing of an art world institution that opened in Coronation year, January 23, 1953. The Pilkingtons and their partner, Christabel Briggs, who joined the gallery in 1956, bear unrivalled witness to the post-war transformation of the visual arts from fine art to multi-media, from a cottage industry to global big business. Collectors were local and were faced only with a choice between British and French, a division sealed by the 1951 École de Paris show at the Royal Academy. The London Gallery in Brook Street had such trouble selling its surrealist and European art that staff were paid in Klees and Magrittes. The Piccadilly made its reputation in the 1960s going against the American grain by instigating the revival of interest in Art Nouveau, 19th-century Symbolism and their 20th-century followers. With the benefit of hindsight the prices look mouth-watering: a Hockney crayon drawing in 1966 for £35 guineas ; a small oil of a lemon by Lucien Freud for £300 in 1968. The Piccadilly Gallery retains the charm of a gentler world – "we always tried to maintain a friendly attitude". It was embodied by Godfrey Pilkington, who bicycled to work from the start, a knapsack on his back and wearing a flappy old mackintosh held together by a piece of string. Some years ago it almost cost him his life in the Hyde Park underpass. Let his be the last word: "I believe art is for pleasure. Hedonism may be too frivolous a creed for this tortured generation. Happy are they for whom it is sufficient." (For full source and article click the Headline). Irish Art