Barry Burman
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Barry Burman (June 14, 1943 - February 17, 2001) was an English figurative artist known for his dark and often disturbing subject matter.
Biography
Being a very private person, few biographical details are available. He was born in Bedford in 1943, gained a first in fine art at Coventry College of Art and continued his studies at the Royal College of Art. Despite his success as an artist, he continued to teach part-time at Mid-Warwickshire College in Leamington between 1974 and 1994. He took an overdose and died in 2001, aged 57.
His early paintings are described by the critic Peter Webb as: "meticulous and controversial images which addressed his ideas on women's sexualty; provocative schoolgirls on black leather sofas; malevolent nudes clutching Victorian dolls; and threatening femme fatales grasping severed male heads". According to Webb, this led on one occasion to a physical attack from feminist critics on a BBC2 television programe1.
In the 1980s, he created a number of images inspired by both real-life and fictional serial-killers, including Jack the Ripper, Ed Gein and Hannibal Lechter. According to Malcolm Yorke, he visited the scenes of the Whitechapel murders which "still exuded a scent of evil, or 'agony traces' as he called them"². Burman painted a number of fine streetscenes (including 'Angel Alley') and dorways in Whitechapel: "The area's blistered paint and cancerous brickwork ... offered him visual stimuli - and nobody could suggest more menace in a wall or cracked window than Burman"³.
In 1991, Burman won the Hunting Group / The Observer award with his painting 'Manac Es', inspired by the Whitechapel murders as fictionalised in Iain Sinclair's first novel 'White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings'.
In the 1980s, he also tackled political themes, most notably the "chauvanism and bloody mindedness" of Margaret Thatcher's premiership and the Falklands war ('Patriots')4.
During his lifetime, Burman had nine solo exhibitions. The final one in 1999 was based upon a work that is said to be placed in American hotel bedrooms because it is too dull for anyone to steal it5: John Bunyan's 'The Pilgrim's Progress'. A surprising choice, but one which Glyn Hughes has linked to Burman's own childhood (he was baptised in the same font as Bunyan and regularly visited the church), his belief in Republicanism shared with Bunyan, and a healing process for Burman himself5.
Burman painted with oil, acrylic, ink and wax crayon mixed with egg yolk and vinegar on thick paper to produce an exaordinary leathery surface1.
Shortly before his death, Burman began to work in a new medium, creating a series of papier mache figures / puppets - a return in three dimensions to earlier themes ('Leather Face', 'Uncle Tic Tac' and 'Tommy Rawhead').
Nicholas Royle's novel Antwerp (Serpent's Tail, 2004) is dedicated to Barry Burman.
"If one had erroneously formed an impression of sadism or brutality, an encounter with the artist changed one's mind. His nature was as far as one could get from that of the monsters he portrayed. He was the most gentle, the most non-judgemental, the most modest man, affectionate to his friends, caring of them, supportive, and he was also among the most committed of artists." Glyn Hughes, The Independent (London), 10 March 2001
One Man Exhibitions
1969: Coventry College of Art
1969: Leamington Spa Art Gallery
1971: University of Warwick
1974: Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
1977: Warwick Gallery
1982: Herbert Art Gallery,Coventry
1992: Nicholas Treadwell Gallery, London
1997: Loyal to the Nightmare, Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham
1999: The Pilgrim's Progress: Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham
2004: Barry Burman retorspective, The Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa
2007: The Unseen Burman, Gallery 12, London
Burman has also exhibited at many group shows in the UK and abroad.
References
1. Peter Webb, The Guardian (London and Manchester), 26 February 2001. Reprinted as an essay in catalogue for retrospective exhibition at The Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa, 2004.
2. Malcolm Yorke, The Times (London), 24 May 2001 (obituary). Reprinted as an essay in catalogue for retrospective exhibition at The Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa, 2004.
3. ibid
4. Glyn Hughes, The Independent (London), 10 March 2001. Reprinted as an essay in catalogue for retrospective exhibition at The Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa, 2004.
5. Glyn Hughes: 'Barry Burman - The Pilgrim's Progress', Goldmark, 1999.
