contemporary monkey

from The Ashington Group

Leave it to another art form, this time the theatre, to pierce through the fog of contemporary painting.  Art can’t seem to do that on its own.  It must be the only thing in the world that can’t (not counting Marmite, which, for the good of mankind, should remain mysterious).

Lee Hall’s “The Pitmen Painters” is showing at the National Theatre in London, and the story is placed in a time where modern art IS the contemporary art.  Lee Hall also wrote Billy Elliot, another humorous story set in Northern England where the perpendicular forces of rugged coarseness hurtles into life’s delicate sensibilities.

The Pitmen Painters is an endearing story about rough old coal miners “learning to appreciate” the art of the day.  The sensibility at the start is about as brutish as it can get.  These are uneducated labourers from the 1930′s who’ve left school at eleven years old to do what people in Northumberland did back then: work grinding hours underground to pull coal out of rock.  The miners come at the subject of art with the obtuseness of a charging rhino, making the story both comical and charming.  An opening salvo from one of the miners screws us in place:

George (miner): We just want to look at a picture, and know what it means.
Lyon (instructor): Ah but, what do you mean, ‘what it means’?
George: What do you think we mean?  ‘What it means’?  We mean the meaning.
Lyon: Exactly.  But what do you mean by ‘the meaning’?
George: What the hell do you think we mean by ‘the meaning’? That’s what we hired your for.  Listen mate, if you [don't know] the meaning of the meaning, what bloody chance have we got?

from the play, The Pitmen Painters by Lee Hall

The characters are based on real men called The Ashington Group who were miles away – both horizontally and vertically – from the Western World’s explosion of 20th century art.  Painting or sculpting couldn’t put food on the table, and art was seen as something to be appreciated, but not made.  Yet the miners shared an exclusive approach to not only viewing art, but making it: the point was, “to make one thing into another.  Whoever you are.”

“What does it mean?” is a persistent question in the play, a fair one to ask of every artist.  Each of us approaches art from a different deflection point, and it’s at this angle – ours, not the artists – which is most important.

The Tate Modern is just down river from The National Theatre, and The Pitmen Painters acts as a fitting anteroom for contemporary and modern art.  Someone should make a 15 minute film out of the play, and have it continually exhibited in the Turbine Hall.  Before taking the stairs up to the galleries, the view might be more revealing if you start at the bottom.