Viva Brighton Issue #69 November 2018
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ART<br />
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1936, they were shown in<br />
the International Surrealist<br />
Exhibition in London,<br />
alongside works by the likes of<br />
Duchamp, Picasso and Dali.<br />
André Breton was said to have<br />
called their art ‘the best and<br />
most truly Surrealist’ of the<br />
contributions by English artists.<br />
“Early on, the subjects that are<br />
coming through include the<br />
trauma of birth – how it was<br />
thought to be the root of adult<br />
emotional complexes – and<br />
sibling rivalry,” Dr Wolf tells<br />
me, as we examine powerful,<br />
colourful images. There are<br />
stylised wombs, and foetuses,<br />
and figures emerging from<br />
small houses.<br />
The couple escaped to America<br />
and Canada during WW2, to<br />
protect their growing archive<br />
of notes, texts, photographs,<br />
and paintings from bombing<br />
raids. Their work had by then<br />
become more political, though<br />
no less psychoanalytical.<br />
Hitler and Mussolini were<br />
seen as “greedy ex-babies,<br />
unable to share their cradle<br />
with others…” Pailthorpe also<br />
had much to say about wars<br />
between the sexes, and argued<br />
that better ideas would be<br />
created by men and women<br />
working together.<br />
In later life, back in England,<br />
they became interested<br />
in Buddhism, Creative<br />
Meditation, and Agni<br />
Yoga, and their paintings<br />
– particularly those by<br />
Pailthorpe – became more<br />
abstract, and even more<br />
colourful. It all seems a lot<br />
freer, perhaps. Dr Wolf<br />
ponders whether they found<br />
release from the demons that<br />
haunted their earlier work.<br />
“Or do the monstrous and<br />
maternal forms that emerge…<br />
suggest they were unable to<br />
start afresh?”<br />
The couple spent their last<br />
years in Sussex, running ‘The<br />
Little Georgian Antiques<br />
Shop’ in Battle. Despite their<br />
age difference, they died a<br />
year apart, in 1971 and 1972,<br />
not as celebrated as they once<br />
were, but not quite forgotten:<br />
their paintings were exhibited<br />
in Hastings in the last year of<br />
Pailthorpe’s life. Alex Leith<br />
A Tale of Mother’s Bones: Grace<br />
Pailthorpe, Reuben Mednikoff<br />
and the Birth of Psychorealism<br />
is at the De La Warr Pavilion<br />
until 20th January 2019.<br />
Reuben Mednikoff, The Blue Hill. Private Collection. Photo: Ivan Coleman<br />
Grace Pailthorpe, Private Collection. Photo: Ivan Coleman<br />
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