These scraps of paper, magically transformed, have their place, I think, among the genuinely profound art of our times, for, to appropriate a line from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, each one of them is a fragment shored against our ruin. Julian Spalding, Internationally acclaimed critic, author and former museum director.
From 21 September 2024, Goldmark will show the work of the remarkable collagist Francis Davison (1919-84). Light lunch and fizz at 1pm and a talk at 2 pm by Julian Spalding, who has heralded Davison the pre-eminent British abstract artist of the second half of the 20th century.
The shy and introverted Francis Davison never sought the limelight or the interest or approval of his peers. It can truly be said that he lived to create the work - sustained by the love of his wife the artist Margaret Mellis and the frugal life they scratched for their Suffolk smallholding.
Though much admired by artist friends in private, it was not until Spalding championed Davison’s work, whenever and wherever he could, that the art establishment began to take notice. In 1983 Davison received a major show at London’s Hayward Gallery which captivated and influenced many - including a young Damien Hirst.
Davison stipulated that no biographical information, dates or titles be displayed, at the Hayward, insisting that viewers bring their own interpretations to the work. Davison died only a year after the Hayward exhibition. Spalding watched helplessly as the ailing Davison destroyed many of his collages in that final year of his life. This action and the quasi anonymity of the Hayward show may have contributed to the fact that his brief moment of recognition perished with the artist himself.
There have been very few major posthumous exhibitions of Davison’s work. This Goldmark show is an all too rare opportunity to see the creations of an artist whose name, many now believe, should be at the forefront of 20th century European art history.
Davison was a modern-day equivalent of the illuminator of the Lindisfarne Gospels. I know of no-one else who could make hues, tones and shapes dance together in the mind’s eye in such a life-enhancing way, in a purely abstract visual equivalent of song. The collages may look thrown together, but they’re not. The colour-space relationships are absolutely exact. Every nick and tear tells in the raw-ragged, furious, utterly unsentimental but glorious beauty he gave to the world. Julian Spalding
Date: Saturday 21st September
Time: 1pm for fizz and a light lunch.
Talk by Julian Spalding: 2pm
