L.S.LOWRY (1887-1976) is one of the most important and famous British artists of the Twentieth Century, yet he is barely known in the rest of the world. Lowry has been the subject of more than 340 exhibitions from the early 1900’s to the present day yet "L. S. Lowry: Artist of the People", the show opening in November 2014 at the Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts is incredibly Lowry’s first ever museum exhibition overseas. With nearly thirty oil paintings and works on paper selected carefully from British public and private collections, this event in Nanjing is a very special occasion. Following the artists widely acclaimed retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain, London in 2013, the collection of works at AMNUA will enable a new public to explore and value Lowry’s art - in Nanjing, China and hopefully beyond. We are proud to present this exhibition, and its associated events, to the public at this moment.

L.S.洛瑞（L.S.LOWRY, 1887-1976）是英国20世纪最重要和知名的现代艺术家之一，但却不为其他国家的人们所熟知。自1900年到今日，洛瑞的作品出现在340个艺术展览中，而2014年11月14日在中国南京艺术学院美术馆开幕的《L.S.洛瑞：艺术家·人民》则是洛瑞在英国本土以外的美术馆的首次个展。此次展览汇聚的近三十幅洛瑞具有代表性的油画及纸本作品，均由我们精心挑选自英国重要的公共和私人收藏。继2013年英国泰特美术馆的大型回顾展之后，这次展览能够使来自南京、中国甚至更大范围的新观众有机会欣赏洛瑞的作品并了解它们的价值。所以，我们很荣幸在当下向公众推出该展览及相关活动。

AMNUA: Exhibition 14 November – 16 December 2014
Organiser: Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts, China 
Co-organiser: Crane Kalman Gallery (UK), ARTouch Consulting (UK), Cultural and Education Section of the British Consulate-General (China)
Supporter: The Lowry (UK), Salford City Council (UK)
Sponsor: Willis (Global Insurance Broker and Risk Adviser), AXA
Producer: Li Xiaoshan
Curator: Wang Yamin, Andrew Kalman
Coordinator: Xiao Lang
Assistance Curator: Li Qingling, Liu Danyang
时间：2014年11月14日-2014年12月16日
主办：南京艺术学院美术馆
协办：克莱恩·卡尔曼画廊（英），艺触咨询（英），英国总领事馆文化教育处
合作：萨尔福德市政府 （英），洛瑞中心（英）
赞助： 韦莱（全球保险经纪人与风险顾问），AXA：安盛艺术品保险
出品人：李小山
策展人：王亚敏、安德鲁·卡尔曼
展览统筹：肖朗
策展助理：李沁灵、刘丹杨

Selection of works from the exhibition 部分展出作品

L.S. Lowry: Artist of the People 
L.S.洛瑞：艺术家·人民

L.S.Lowry (1887-1976) began his career as an artist in the city of Manchester a hundred years ago. Manchester, in north-west England, had by this time come to represent an irreversible change in Britain. It was at the heart of the country's industrial growth and subsequent decline and the social changes that accompanied it. This city environment was of course full of people like Lowry; surrounded by factories, mills and chimneys (Mill Scene, 1965). This is why the idea of making a small Lowry retrospective in China resonated. China’s evolution from an economy rooted substantially in agriculture to one driven by the manufacture of products, quite often for export, mirrors changes Lowry observed and recorded in northern England nearly a century earlier.

Lowry was fascinated by human behaviour within this cityscape, from the image of a rain-soaked man shuffling to work (Man in a Trenchcoat, 1945) to the noisy clamour of an auction house sale thronging with people (The Auction, 1957). This was Lowry’s ‘food and drink’. This is Lowry, the artist of the people.

This concise exhibition of paintings and drawings will present a flavour of this hugely popular artist’s work to a new audience in China, who will hopefully empathize with the joys and dramas of living in a great bustling city, such as Nanjing.

一百年前，L.S.洛瑞（1887年—1976年）在英格兰北部的曼彻斯特开始了他的艺术生涯。当时的曼彻斯特迎来了一场英国社会不可阻挡的大变迁。洛瑞和曼彻斯特城一起处在了英国工业迅猛发展的中心。工业的突飞猛进，随之而来的是社会变革。城市里挤满了人，林立的厂房和烟囱将人们层层包围（《工厂景观》，1965）。这也正是中国与洛瑞作品之间的共鸣之处，这也是在中国举办小型洛瑞作品回顾展的原因。中国处在从传统农业社会向以产品制造为驱动力的现代工业社会的转型中（并且有大量产品出口国外）。这与大约一个世纪前洛瑞对英格兰北部的那场工业变革的观察和记录有着高度相似性。

洛瑞对人们在这样的城市中的行为表现出了极大的兴趣。他既画过被大雨浇成落汤鸡还一步一滑走去工作的人（《穿风衣的男子》，1945），也画过拍卖行里嘈杂喧嚣的人群（《拍卖会》，1957）。这是洛瑞的创作“食粮”。这就是洛瑞，一位属于人民的艺术家。

这场小而精的展览汇集了洛瑞的油画与素描作品，它将首次把洛瑞--—这位在英国深受喜爱的艺术家的作品展现在中国观众面前。我们希望中国观众可以结合自己在像南京这样一座繁华又匆忙的都市中的那些愉悦或富有戏剧化的生活体验，对洛瑞的的作品产生共鸣。


Curator’s Statement 策展人语

By Wang Yamin

L. S. LOWRY (1887-1976) is one of the most important and famous British artists of the Twentieth Century, yet he is still an artist who is barely recognised outside the UK. With nearly thirty oil paintings and works on paper selected carefully from British public and private collections, L. S. Lowry: Artist of the People is Lowry’s first solo museum show outside the UK. Following his widely acclaimed retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain in 2013, the collection of works at AMNUA will enable a new public to explore and value Lowry’s art — in Nanjing, China and hopefully beyond. We are proud to present this exhibition, with its events, to the public at this moment.

For more than 50 years, Lowry painted the life and society that surrounded him, in Manchester in Northern Britain. Images of ordinary people at work and play, amongst the mills and factories, parks and football pitches of his home-town. These honest observations, sometimes with harsh imagery of the industrial landscape but other times full of wit and humour, are today enjoyed and admired by the general British public.

But controversies are always raised within the “Art World” and so to an acceptance of Lowry. One of the key questions is the core value of Lowry’s art, the close relationship between art and the people. All of the sturdy things are vanished, all of the holy things are profaned; this declaration of Marx about Modernity by the approach of socialism plutonomy was also echoed in the Modern Art revolution since 19th century with its stress on the relationship between art and the people. But at the same time, the presence of the people in art was also often bleached. With Modernism, one of the key practices of contemporary art is the Political practice as Aesthetics practice; morality question is just aesthetic question. How art can serve the people becomes one of the knots in artists’ minds.

The main context of Lowry’s art was modern life against the backdrop of the British Industrial Revolution and its gradual decline. He was renowned for his industrial landscapes of the “Cotton Capital”, Manchester, with the everyday grassroots of life, witnessed in the streets and lanes of the city.  Such depictions of contemporary life could exude an atmosphere of frustration and loneliness but with dignity and humour. We can see how the people bear the dilemma brought about by modern life: the deterioration of the living environment and the estrangement of people from society. In this sense, we would like to call Lowry’s art a kind of  “heroism” among modernity (Baudelaire). Such heroism was particularly represented by Lowry personally. Lowry’s life and art practices were tied closely with common peoples. Insisting on being an artist of the people, Lowry showed us how a painter survived and even thrived. Lowry declared all his paintings were “self-portraits” — to respect the people is to respect the humankind (Goncourt). 

Because the historical process of China with its reality of the moment, the social problems caused by the development, cornered dwelling of people, etc., this exhibition in Nanjing will provoke resonance and reflection. An artist as one of the people, how the people occupy ART, etc., all of these are also present important art proposition-for many fashionable contemporary art practices (Participation, Intervention and Public, etc.), the fineness of the people reflected in art is really a touchstone.



By Andrew Kalman

Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976) (commonly known as L.S.Lowry) was born in Manchester in northern England in 1887 and went on to become one of the UK's most famous, successful and popular artists. His paintings and drawings recorded the changing sights, scenery and behaviour of British society, as it hurtled through the C.20th, all the way through to his death in 1976, aged 89.

Before and during the Second World War, Lowry’s subject-matter illustrated the hardships and strife of post-industrial (northern) Britain; existential images that mirrored the artist’s own frustrations, working during the day as a rent collector, painting at night, while also caring for his ailing parents. His works painted in a darker palette and with a thicker, more heavily layered paint surface, emphasize the travails of many of the artist’s fellow citizens. This is after all a society still coming to terms with near bankruptcy following the end of the First World War: a nascent but not fully enfranchised and restless Labour Movement; a fading Empire; and an embryonic ‘financial system’ that had just experienced a calamitous collapse, wreaking devastating economic instability and panic. This too is a country without the safety net of an NHS or welfare – a class-ridden society, unsure whether it had truly emerged from nineteenth-century Victorian Britain. 

Lowry, although not in a parasitic way – far from it in fact, he was quite altruistic – thrived on such desperation, or at least his body of work did. Much of his painted imagery took place in the glare of the public gaze: witnessed by many but recorded by only one – Lowry. The clamour and commotion of a fight, an accident, an arrest or such like, drew a crowd of onlookers who cared to take notice, just as a normal, soot-saturated Manchester day was chatted about and perhaps then quickly ignored. Pre-war and in the early 1940s, this was Lowry’s visual palette – one he committed to canvas with the honesty of a documentary cameraman: a genuine social historian.

After 1945, changes in society occurred with greater pace and so too did the artist’s work: retired from office job, his parents deceased, buoyed by art market success and growing popular acclaim, Lowry was rejuvenated. Although still forgoing many accoutrements of postwar ‘modernity’ – television, the telephone, a motor car (Lowry preferred to take taxis to his favourite destinations, a bit like me) – the ageing painter adopted a lighter feel, a brighter, broader range of colours, gaiety even. He still painted great and complex scenes of public record, but these were joyous, jubilant pictures, anticipating the nation’s increasingly expectant hope for a more stable, healthier and wealthier future. 

My late father Andras Kalman (1919 - 2007), a Hungarian Jewish refugee arrived to the UK in 1939, aged 20. He opened his first gallery in Manchester 10 years later. Lowry visited in 1950 and became a client, acquiring paintings by French artists from my fathers struggling business. Despite their many differences - age, nationality, background, behaviour and even height, they forged a close friendship.  

My father moved his gallery to its current location in Knightsbridge, London in 1957, and although never Lowry's primary dealer, over many years sold 100's of works by the artist. The Gallery also made interesting and varied Lowry exhibitions and catalogues, all the while agitating for British art institutions to promote Lowry's work overseas but unfortunately this never happened, either during the lifetime of Lowry or my fathers. 

This is why I am so pleased and proud to have assisted in the realisation of this small but special exhibition of Lowry's work at the Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts - the artists first ever Museum exhibition outside of the UK.  So thank you to all at AMNUA, particularly Professor Li Xiaoshan, Wang Yamin and also Burberry Asia Ltd., Willis and AXA insurance companies for their support and most of all to Xiao Lang, the freelance, representative of the AMNUA in London, whom I met at the Masterpiece Fair in London in 2013, and whose infectious enthusiasm and encouragement sparked the exhibition into life.


王亚敏

L.S.洛瑞（L.S.LOWRY, 1887-1976）是英国20世纪最重要和知名的现代艺术家之一，但却不为其他国家的人们所熟知。此次展览汇聚的近三十幅洛瑞具有代表性的油画及纸本作品，均由我们精心挑选自英国重要的公共和私人收藏。《L.S.洛瑞：艺术家·人民》是继2013年英国泰特美术馆的大型回顾展之后，洛瑞在英国本土以外美术馆的首次个展。这次展览能够使来自南京、中国甚至更大范围的新观众有机会欣赏洛瑞的作品并了解它们的价值。所以，我们很荣幸在当下向公众推出该展览及相关活动。

50多年来，洛瑞一直在英国北部城市曼彻斯特描绘他身边的生活与社会。他的作品描绘的都是在家乡的厂房中、公园里或足球场上工作和娱乐的普通人。时而刻画工业社会生活的艰辛，时而充满风趣与幽默，这些忠于现实的观察，在今天受到了英国公众的广泛喜爱和赞赏。但是“艺术世界”内部向来争议不断，对洛瑞的接受亦不能避免争议。问题的关键之一是洛瑞艺术的核心价值：艺术和人民休戚相关。“一切等级的和坚固的东西都烟消云散了，一切神圣的东西都被亵渎了”，马克思这一社会政治经济学的现代性宣言，在19世纪中后期以来的现代艺术革命中亦不断被验证，艺术和人民的关系被不断强调。但是，与此同时，人民在艺术中的存在也不断被漂白。现代主义之后，当代艺术的重要实践之一是作为美学实践的真与善的实践，道德问题就是美学问题，艺术能否和如何为人民服务成为艺术家的心结。

洛瑞创作的主要语境是英国工业革命以及社会逐步衰落背景下的现代性社会生活。他对现代性生活的描绘弥漫着沮丧和孤独的气氛，但不失尊严，甚至幽默。我们可以看到，人民是如何不断承受着现代性生活的带来的困境： 环境破坏带来的恶果以及人被异化所带来的人与人、人与社会之间日益增长的隔膜。在此意义上，我们也愿意将洛瑞的艺术称为一种现代性生活中的“英雄主义”（波德莱尔）。这种英雄主义也尤其强烈地体现在洛瑞本人身上。洛瑞的生活和创作同大众息息相通。洛瑞坚持做一个属于人民大众的艺术家，他向我们展示了一个艺术家如何渡过一种现代性的生活。洛瑞宣称他创作的都是 “自画像”——对人民的尊重就是对人的尊重。

因为中国当下的历史进程及其现实，包括社会发展所带来的问题、人（与人）栖居的困境等等，洛瑞作品在南京的此次展览必将引发我们的共鸣和反思。“艺术家作为人民的一员，人民如何拥有艺术” 等问题是当下流行的艺术实践（如参与、介入、公共性等）中的重要命题 ——人民成色在艺术中的反映是一块试金石。


安德鲁·卡尔曼

劳伦斯·斯蒂芬·洛瑞（简称L.S.洛瑞，1887年—1976年）出生于英格兰北部的曼彻斯特。他是英国最有名、最成功并且最受欢迎的艺术家之一。他的油画和素描记录着英国不断变化着的社会自然、和人文景观。英国社会的重大变迁贯穿了20整个世纪，而洛瑞这样的创作方式和题材也一直延续到1976年，直到他离开人世（时年89岁）。

二战前与战中期间，洛瑞描绘的主题展现了后工业时代的英国（北部）社会中生活的艰辛以及社会纷争；而那些对未来充满了隐忧画作则反映了艺术家本人的沮丧和坎坷生活。洛瑞白天不得不出门为收租公司去收房租，只能晚上画画，而且还要照顾他生病的父母。他的很多作品色调阴暗，并使用厚重的油彩和多层涂抹方式创作。他以这样的绘画方式突出同胞们的艰难生活。 

一战的余波使得英国社会依然处在破产的边缘：新兴的、躁动的、尚未争取到权力的工人运动，衰落的帝国，还有刚刚经历了毁灭性重创的“金融体系”萌芽，造成了英国严重的经济动荡和社会恐慌。这时的英国尚没有如今的全民医保或社会福利的庇护，完全是一个阶级当道的社会。很难说此时的英国是否已经真正从十九世纪维多利亚时代走上了崛起之路。

洛瑞虽然为收租公司打工，但他绝不是那个困苦社会的寄生虫。事实上，他本人十分无私。但洛瑞的作品却是和那个充满绝望和困顿的社会相依相存的，甚至“得益于”这样的社会。他绘画的大量景象都发生在公众视野之下，只不过众人见过且过，唯有洛瑞记录了下来。伴随打架斗殴、意外或是警察逮捕而来的喧嚣和骚动常常会招惹来人群的围观，但这只不过是平常无奇又煤烟缭绕的曼彻斯特普通一天，顶多算个谈资，很快就被遗忘。二战前及40年代初期，这些内容就是洛瑞的视像调色板上的油彩，他一心要以纪录片摄影师一般的忠诚将所见的内容如实地反映在画布之上。洛瑞，一个真正的社会历史学家。

1945年以后，艺术家的作品随着着社会变迁发生了很大变化。洛瑞从办公室的工作中退休、经历了双亲的过世，同时也因为作品在艺术市场中大获成功和日益增长的名声而倍受鼓舞。他重新焕发出活力。尽管他在生活上还是放弃了诸如电视机、电话机和汽车（洛瑞喜欢乘坐出租车去他常去的地方，这点和我很像）等战后现代化的新装备，在艺术创作上，有些上了年纪的洛瑞开始营造一种更轻快的感觉，使用更为明亮和更多种类的色彩，欢快、均和。洛瑞依然描绘那些社会记录式的宏大复杂景象，但都是些充满了欢乐和喜庆的作品。这与英国当时对更加稳定、健康和富足的未来与日俱增的的向往不谋而合。

我已故的父亲安德拉斯·卡尔曼（1919—2007），在他20岁时以匈牙利的犹太难民身份于1939年来到英国。10年后，他在曼彻斯特开了他的第一家画廊。洛瑞于1950年参观了画廊并成为了画廊的客户。他在我父亲为画廊经营一筹莫展的时候，从他手上购买了一幅法国艺术家的作品。尽管洛瑞和我的父亲有很多不同，包括年龄、国籍、背景、行为方式甚至身高，但他们结下了深厚的友谊。

1957年，我父亲把画廊搬到其现今的所在地——伦敦骑士桥。虽然从来不是洛瑞的一级经销商，但多年来画廊已经交易了几百幅洛瑞的作品。画廊也举办了多场有趣的洛瑞展览，出版了丰富多样的画册，并一直在鼓动英国艺术机构向海外推广洛瑞的作品。但非常遗憾，这在洛瑞和我父亲的有生之年从未发生过。

不过也正因为如此，能够协助实现洛瑞作品在中国南京艺术学院美术馆的展出，我感到十分的开心和荣幸。这个展览虽然规模不大，但意义非凡，因为这是洛瑞第一次在英国以外的美术馆的举办展览。因此，我要感谢AMNUA南京艺术学院美术馆的全体工作人员，特别是馆长李小山先生，联合策展人王亚敏先生，Burberry Asia Ltd.（博柏利亚州有限公司）, Willis（韦莱保险经纪有限公司）以及AXA（安盛艺术品保险）。尤其要感谢的是南京艺术学院美术馆在英国合作项目的代表肖朗女士。我和她相识于2013年的伦敦大师艺术博览会，她的富有感染力的热情和鼓励才使得这个展览最终得以实现。


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