"I love you, you carriers of souls, you sufferers in the dark, you sufferers in the light. Your pass me by shrouded in your clothes" - Charles Lutyens
Psychogeriatric Ward (c.1975)
"It is life - that is, 'being in the world' - that I am engaged with, observe, and from which I draw" once wrote Charles Lutyens (1933-2021), the artist, art therapist, and great nephew of the celebrated architect Edwin Lutyens. Lutyens' (Charles) best known works, though both unknown to me until recently and I've still not seen either, are Angels of the Heavenly Host in St Paul's Church on Bow Common (the UK's largest single artist mosaic) and Outraged Christ (a 15 foot crucific) in Liverpool Cathedral.
At the Bethlem Museum of the Mind near Beckenham they've just ended a show, A World Apart, about his art (and his art therapy) and on Saturday I braved the wet and windy conditions and went to have a gander. It was a small show but it was worth a look (and the museum itself is worth a visit too -I've added a small number of supplementary photos to the end of this blog so you can get a feel for what it's like).
In his role as art therapist, Lutyens had access to a hidden world of 1970s/1980s psychiatric hospitals, a time when such places were far more stigmatised than they are now. On the bus from the town of Basingstoke to my home of Tadley we'd pass by Park Prewett mental hospital and quite often comments would go along the line of "it's your stop, isn't it?".
Yet many people had no idea what these places were really like. Lutyens did and perhaps that's why his work is so sympathetic/empathetic. Anywhere you visit you get to see the people there as individuals and as humans and, of course, mental hospitals are no different.
Lutyens himself had trained at Chelsea, Slade, and St.Martin's in London and briefly in Paris too but the art therapy work began in Oxfordshire in the seventies. We're not told why but we are informed, and we can see for ourselves, that Lutyens wasn't solely interested in the day to day workings of these places (though he was interested in that) but in the emotions and feelings of the people who spent their lives, or some of their lives, there.
Self-Portrait as a Young Man (1956)
Including himself. Lutyens, looking very serious and taking it all in here, believed that "the images we create are the outer form of our inner experience". As with a watercolour of a young boy from the same decade, we see how Lutyens liked to focus on people's expressions, often thoughtful ones. Or, in the case of an untitled figure, isolation and loneliness. Two things you can image there being a lot of in this particular environment.
When He Could See (c.1950s)
Untitled (Solitary Figure) (c.1960s)
The Group (c.1965)
Not always though. Lutyens painted group therapy sessions where people were encouraged to come together and share their experiences with the aim of helping themselves and each other. Even if Lutyens himself appears to be hovering above, rather than part of, the group.
There's an altogether different 'group' in The Betrayal/The Marked One. A ghostly spectre (is there any other kind?) and a dark, barely there, character who seems to merge into the background. There seems to be some sort of Christian meaning here which I'm unable to read but I like it as a painting anyway. To be honest, Christian 'morality' would probably ruin it.
The Betrayal/The Marked One (c.1968)
The Maggot (c.1968)
Lutyens, himself, felt the pains of life. Following a divorce and the loss of contact with a child, he started to see himself as a 'maggot' (see above) and at one point was so 'diminished' he could only make important decisions by tossing a coin. Even The Dice Man gives you more options than that.
He was also traumatised, permanently it seems, by the memory of his mother having had part of her arm surgically removed and, even more so, her spurning his attempts to help her. You can see it all in the below painting, the mother's independent expression, the son's 'woebegone' features, and the vertical/physical division down the centre reflecting the mental division between the two of them.
Son with Mother/Amputation of the Left Forequarter (c.1975)
Corridor Encounter (c.1965)
Corridor Encounter looks like something out of
Francis Bacon's nightmares, Old Woman in Chair has a hint of
Paula Rego about it, and another Loss painting juxtaposes its bright pastel shades by having the sitter look as if she is an absolute turmoil.
Then there's some riffing on
Edvard Munch. Lutyens had been told his work was reminiscent of
the Norwegian master (and, to be fair, I can see it in places) and The Scream is a playful tribute to
Munch's most famous painting. Though not sure what The Siblings is all about.
Old Woman in Chair (c.1975)
The Door (undated)
Another big name crops up in the form of
Sigmund Freud. Freud believed that there were competing centres of gravity within the human psyche:- the id (telling us what we want), the superego (internalising societal rules and morals), and the ego which mediates between the two. In Lutyens' The Door the id is believed to be represented by the impulsive dog but it's unclear who the other three characters, not least the slightly horror like figure lurking behind the door, are supposed to be.
Looks cool even if it's unclear. Maybe the guy behind the door is the same dude who 'rises out of the chair' in the below painting from 1965. He looks quite cross and his chair looks a bit like
Van Gogh's famous one if we're in the business of art historic references.
Rise out of the Chair (c.1965)
A Couple in Two Rooms (c.1971)
Lutyens wasn''t the first whose art came from
asylums and the like. Alongside the Victorian painter Richard Dadd (whose work me and my friend's used for a poster for our psychedelic night Cuthbert's Morning Off) there was, some time later, the Danish artist Louis Marcussen (1894-1985) who called himself Overtaci, "uber-patient" - he did spend fifty-six years in the Danish mental health system, who has an entire museum in Aarhus devoted to his fantastic visions.
One of his works has been included here. It only just fits in the remit of the exhibition but it's pretty good.You can definitely see a bit of Hieronymous Bosch in it - though Overtaci cited
Leonardo da Vinci as his chief influence. He signed it Louis Concales just to chuck a third name into the mix. Then I'll leave you with The Siren (one of Lutyens' works that does look like a Munch) and some general images of the Bethlem Museum of the Mind. Go along. It's worth a look.
Overtaci - Untitled (undated)
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