Michael Andrews

Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, where acquired by Colin St John Wilson, 28th November 1975 for £1,200

London, Hayward Gallery, Michael Andrews, 31st October 1980 - 11th January 1981, cat. no.95, illustrated, with Arts Council tour to Fruit Market Gallery, Edinburgh and Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester;
London, Tate Britain, Michael Andrews, 19th July - 7th October 2001, cat. no.44, illustrated, where lent by Colin St John Wilson.

Original canvas. There is slight surface dirt to the canvas, most visible around the raised globular areas of paint. There is an old tiny surface scratch along the right edge in the bottom right corner. This excepting the work appears in very good condition. Ultraviolet light reveals no obvious signs of retouching. Housed behind glass in a thick wooden, white-painted frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present lot.
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‘Mike is so economical: he paints nothing but masterpieces.’ (Frank Auerbach, quote reproduced in Michael Andrews: Lights (exh. cat.), The British Council, 20^th June – 1^st October 2000, p.35)

In the mid-1960s Michael Andrews was consumed by the idea of Zen enlightenment and began contemplating a series of paintings which were to imagine a metaphorical journey of the soul. Having happened upon a phrase written by psychiatrist R D Laing - ‘the skin-encapsulated ego’ - and having seen an image of a balloon floating above the English country side, he felt he could construct an imagery which relates to the release of the ego - and the freedom which comes from this loss, a lightening of the ballasts of the soul.

It was this sense of floating or flying above the ground which he found appealing, and felt was a usable collective metaphor, one which pervades across cultural and physical boundaries:

‘We dream of flying. Usually there is the sensation of leaving the ground and suddenly acquiring the ability to float over obstacles and keep going, by sheer will and power, across land and sea. It is a common dream - escapism, obviously - reflecting universal aspirations. It is the romantic impulse of Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind: “If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee.”’  (The Artist, quoted in Michael Andrews: Lights (exh. cat.), The British Council, 20^th June – 1^st October 2000, p.17)

The resulting series, Lights, was made up of seven paintings produced over a period of 5 years, from 1970 to 1975.  Cabin (fig. 1, 1975, Private Collection, Paris) was essentially an addendum to this series, it continued the idea of going on a personal voyage - making a pilgrimage – but in this case the passenger airliner was used as a container for the soul. Following Lights, in which the artist eliminates the figure entirely, instead focusing on the balloon amongst the landscape, or the scene spread out below the basket, Andrews desired to return to painting people. Inspired by his daughter, who had made a drawing of passengers waving out of plane windows, he completed a series of sketches, in which the present work is included, that were intended to occupy the windows of a commercial jet. The present work apparently and rather inexplicably depicts a victim of a mine disaster, his face looming ominously out of the darkness, his safety helmet still in position. This seeming randomness is in keeping with the artist’s process: he continually drew from the images which confronted him in daily life, photographs clipped from magazines, pages from The Observer or Sunday Times Colour Supplement, and combined them in idiosyncratic ways which suited his eventual purpose and intention, as may be the case here.  In the end he abandoned the depiction of individuals peering out from within, and instead went with a composition which is much more isolating, the aeroplane as a container encapsulating and hiding the souls within.